Scorpion
by Aurora-Borealis Coyote
Summary: "They call her 'vengeance' and they call her 'killer', they call and she never answers." Fem!Scar and genderbent cast of FMA. Rating may go up as story progresses.
1. Arcana

**This is the introduction chapter, by the way. **

**And…eh…hi. I had this idea in my head and I suppose now this is the beginning of it. I was inspired because I was reading Shoujo Fullmetal Alchemist by NaokoElric2250 (go read it, it's a really cool story about FMA except the Elric brothers are girls, Roy and Riza are Roya and Rizo, and Winry is a boy) and it got me thinking if other male characters were female and females were males, etc.**

**So this is the story of female!Scar, and I've genderbent some other people too. (Can you guess who? =) ) Because I think it all (family relationship, reception by the military, etc) would have gone rather….differently.**

**Warnings: this story contains/will contain language, violent content, thematic elements, disturbing themes, and sexual symbolism and references.  
**

**Pairings: None as of now…although maybe some later on. What's romance? XD **

The quick figure slips into an alleyway, pressing her back to the cold, wet wall as she catches her breath and looks out. The coast is clear- for now, that is. Nobody to fight or report her or interfere. That's how it seems right now. But as she knows, few things are always as they seem, whether it means good news or not.

It's not a moment of peace, but it's close enough. She's learned to take what she can get if she can't get what she needs.

There's blood on her hands, and some if it is her own. She rubs them over the rough cobblestones of the wall, trying to clean them off, but not making much of a difference. It's happened before, it will happen again, and after all, she's not the only one with hands that are never truly clean. Without those hands, breaking down and rebuilding, she wouldn't be here.

(You know what they say, hell-hath-no-fury, but they didn't expect it from her at first, not from her, they didn't remember her and it was quite a shock, wasn't it, Central, some lady from the war zone doing who knows what to the military!) It was even a shock even to her at first. But now it's just all the same to her, and she barely even cares one way or the other. There's one force driving her, more powerful and meaningful and unstoppable than duty or love, the vengeance that she will carry out. The vengeful need given to her, clear and almost seductive-

_will you let them make you into the walking dead? or will you take the crueler option?_

(She died and came alive.)

They call her _killer_ and they call her _madwoman_; _God's executioner _and _Right Arm of Destruction_; _red-eyed bitch_ and _scorpion lady_; _Vengeance of Ishval _and _the Scarred One._ They call and she never answers, never answers to anyone but the Creator and the path. And the Creator isn't always around.

So now it's just her and the arm of someone who once lived that was passed on to someone who is in the space between life and death, and she'll send her enemies to their ends or die trying, paving a path through hell and Amestris and burning the path behind her.

She isn't afraid, not when there's nothing to lose, not now. It's not the nice decision, not the one that she'd have been encouraged to take. But it's better than the alternatives. And there's no going back from where she is now, and that's the decision she has left.

She looks out once more and runs out before anyone can see her, Ishvalan coloring and smeared in State Alchemist blood and looking like the nationally wanted criminal she is. If she's quiet, and she always is, she won't be caught. (The Amestrian system isn't what is proclaims to be).

Hers is a path with no real end in sight, but it's good enough for now.


	2. Temperance

**=) Here it is, the first war flashback chapter. I thought it would be interesting to make Scar's brother…er…a sister. Because the concept of "sisterhood", not just biological but metaphorical is rather interesting. **

**Trippy almost-symbolism here. **

_In every act of renewal, nothing is done abruptly but all is in proportion and moderation...reflection, decision which is not immediate. The argument for and against is considered._

Let's start off at this story's beginning. Put it in order, it all might make more sense, might feel more evened out. Or not. This here's the end to another story, the first point in this one, the turning point. It's the sort of beginning that ends up forgotten, bits of it scattered where nobody wants to look, some in the middle and some in the end and some just erased, but all its bits are embedded. This beginning is embedded in her, not shown often but it's always there. Some scars are less visible than others.

This is war. For her, the lady-scorpion desert-scourge of Central that she'll soon become, it is war. Not quite the breaking point yet, though. But something is happening, the sort of thing that shakes the foundation until you can't rebuild the structure.

(This is war and this is life and that means sometimes you can't rebuild or get back on your feet as you are. She's not the only one who will learn that.)

It's being surrounded. Being surrounded by a dying people (your own dying kin), surrounded by coats blue with authority and red with blood, surrounded by you and your sister- you and your sister coming to realize that no matter how hard you pray, you can't control the outcome. (she's not). Not when her sister is painting herself in alchemical tattoos, more detailed than any of the State Alchemists- she doesn't look herself anymore, she looks like something else.

I mean really, just take a look at her sister. Just take a look at how Elder is covering her limbs and back with twisting whirls of ink and blasphemy, pretending that it means she has less of a chance of getting blasted into the next life by whichever sniper or State Alchemist to come around. Just look at how it gives Younger a sort of desperate wrath, nobody will listen to her but then again, (this is war,) nobody's listening to anyone nowadays. It will be too late soon, if it isn't already. Or maybe not for these two, maybe it isn't a question of it being too late, no matter of lost chances or wasted opportunity. It's being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Sister, what are you even trying to do?" it's a late afternoon and nothing ever happens then does it? Nothing except the hands on the clock grasping for their moment to strike, and they always aim to maim. What she's trying to do doesn't matter. It will not do anything one way or the other. The scene is set. And that's not an easy concept for her to embrace, not even for her, who spends her days in the musky altars praising the Creator, Creator who has no end and no beginning, Creator who sets every moment as it is.

"Please don't fight me. We have to stand by one another," pleads the elder, "can't you be nice about it? I'm not doing anything wrong. Can't you for once just see I'm trying to _help_?" she's not succeeding though, and she doesn't want to see that. She's always been the one with reason, the gentler one, and in times like this those traits don't get you anywhere- especially not someone like her. Why can't you understand me! she thinks. (Why can't you be as you're supposed to) she almost thinks this and realizes what a thought that is, realizes she isn't exactly how she's supposed to be either.

Ishvalans aren't supposed to be acting like the very invaders who are _right this second _turning their land into a wound upon the earth. That's what she thinks as she eyes her older sister, glaring at the curled lines dancing out of her clothes from her back and arms.

(Sister holds the secrets.)

There are other matters at hand. She is committed, has made herself into a woman of the Creator, living with the other sisters (sister of the desert, sing the hymn of Ishvala). And so she lives by the Creator Ishvala's teachings, retribution and ruthlessness (yes, yes, yes, love and kindness, is this really the time? Everything has its time and place). Right now, she can't stop another invasion, another attack, the war, not anything- not even her sister.

"I…apologize, sister, but you're making a mistake!" No matter what she does, she'll never change Sister, can she? She's always been the one with virtue and dedication. Not the helpful one, not the one that speaks and makes people listen, she's ready for whatever battle life throws her (_iron priestess_, say the younger village boys, when she doesn't hear- focused and hard) but she can't always fight.

"It isn't the time for these sorts of arguments," says the elder, "let alone anything." And has it ever been? She's always said this.

"All right." She's a bit quieter, but much more discouraged. She sees what her sister's turning herself into, and it's her mistake to make- but what can the consequences be? The devoted one. Always thinking of what the others are doing and not being able to do a thing one way or the other. Soon enough, or perhaps too late, that is going to change.

_Xx_

Rochelle Mustang is burning alive.

More precisely, she's burning alive and has been for this entire war at the exact heat that it takes to turn approximately 20,000 Ishvalans (only think of it as a statistic and you can sleep) a day into ash.

She feels like it, at least. All she does is regret. She thinks _what were you doing, Mustang_ after watching her teacher's relationship with his son lose its final scraps, after taking the test and getting the pocketwatch, after going to the front line, now and she'll never stop.

She smells like smoke. All the others must notice. She's going insane and none of them are going to notice that. Hawkeye? Will the cadet notice or will he not? He'd better not, he needs her and she needs him. Hughes? He might. If he does it means it's true.

If the Ishvalans are right (if they are, why is this happening?) and there is someone out there, this _one_ must have a role here. This one must hear her. But if _Oh Creator, Ishvala_ hears is it to deliver her from or drive her to her own destruction?

She knows what it is. She'll use today to burn Kanda and then one of these days she'll see the real truth and then she'll be her own casualty. Hawkeye and Hughes, yes they'll mourn like a good companion would. And _most deserved, she should have been prepared_ will say her Crimson Lotus sister-in-arms, like the good worker of Amestris.

(Yes, go register, my Amestrian comrade, my daughter of the dragon, in the office you'll see a wall of posters. One says _Sister-Women! Join Us Up Front! _Three panels. It's said by Major Panel One, the valiant State Alchemist with a pocketwatch glinting in the moonlit battlefield. She clasps her hands to the side of a building, eyes shut patiently, waiting for the power to call itself through. She looks capable and that is what is needed. And it's said by Medic Panel Two, serene nurse soaked with blood and sweat and sand. Her face is unfazed, and she is here to make our boys and girls the axe of Ishval's neck, all good to go, because this is what she loves, this is what she can do, the touch she knows. And then, sister, it's said by Soldier Panel Three, no medals or special ranks or special identity, just your drafted front-liner-next-door, see her standing amidst the dead and wounded but it's a mid-afternoon battle in this picture, she's looking like she's been dragged through hell but she's going to keep going and that is her path now. Keep that in mind, fighter, you'll need to.)

_Xx_

Older Sister is alone right now. Just her in her room, textbooks and tattoos and studying the ways of the ground beneath her. Nothing can harm her right now, no looming knowledge that will lead her to madness or death; she'll be spared from that at least. But what's this? What is the sand telling her, the earth's secret?

Not the earth. It's this country, this land of locked time. The earth, it tells her, _you will not touch me, you cannot know me, but you know this, don't you? _It radiates falsehoods.

What has she discovered? She doesn't know, that's the problem. But this isn't how it should be. Then again, should that come as a surprise?

All she knows is, not this minute and not tomorrow, but soon it's going to make its move, whatever it is. Sister holds the secrets, but she cannot know them, and nobody will, not yet.


	3. The Empress

**I'm satisfied with how female!Scar and male!Riza are coming out…Rochelle is fun…and female!Kimblee was fun but I hope she's not turning into a Villain Sue. **

**The poster women are going to be important. =)**

_The passive power of the material world...a force against which one cannot react._**  
**

She's praying again. Out of duty and desire and schedule, as any of the sisters and good Ishvalans would. But she knows herself and she knows her reasons for calling the Creator. There are no other options, nowhere else to turn, only heaven to look to when hell closes in from all directions. (Look to, yes, but find solace in? Oh, you know the answer.) This would be an open space for the average war-supporter to step in and say how her faith is desperate madness (she hasn't seen desperate madness, not yet), dependence on the unreal to deal with what is real. Well, say what you will, she _is_ dealing with the real, the earthly and unchangeable.

(At least I realize what this is, sister, at least I know how to use real logic) but it doesn't matter. Realize the truth, she can do that. She can't do anything about it. Understanding that nothing can stop a war in full swing does not make her any more prepared for a sudden attack. Yes, she is youthful and physically fit, helpful in a hand-to-hand-combat. So is every trained soldier with guns and knives and transmutation circles. The times are changing, and she can stay as traditional as she wants, but is tradition really a factor here?)

Thinking about it makes the small altar seem haunted by the future. She can nearly taste the incense, waving down her throat and into her eyes, and she can almost see the dead before her. Finishing her prayer with steel resolution, shutting out all doubts (never doubting her faith, never using hope as a crutch…but doubting a necessity) she walks out the door, away from the holy and straight into what she can have. Into the village, into the house of death.

_Xx_

Rizen Hawkeye, you asked for this, remember, it will do you good, you will do this, he thinks. And chances are he can make himself believe it. He's always kept his will, kept his strength and head, so why shouldn't he now?

That's a question he knows the answer to, but one question he wishes he didn't. He's always been that way, hasn't he, knowing what is right. Precise. A quick analyzer, gets right to the point quickly and quietly, you won't even notice as he does. Fleeting like a bullet. Watches in the background and goes in for the kill, distant and set apart, deathly still.

He's heard them. A kid like that here (he should still be in the academy but it isn't his place to say anything) that only means the war is almost done.

They're wrong. He might be young, he might be less prepared than he thought. But he knows you can't put an end point on things like this.

He's guarded. Yes, he's been that way since he was a child, he's had to be that way. And now he can never stop. There is no safety. And it makes him all too prepared, but still not enough.

If he's doing it right, he'll stay the same throughout the time that they measure. And Flame won't pick up. He doesn't want her trying to take care of him. He has to be the one to protect because he doesn't want to need saving. He doesn't want to be his own casualty.

And still, he's wondering, does any of this mean anything in the long run?

_Xx_

Look at her. (yes, me). Soldier, lift your head, they can't take that from you. At least, they haven't yet. See your sister, torn and worn, but she's still standing, isn't she? The sky is black with smoke, clouding over the sun that burns itself, fire and rage. Enemy lines? None of that now, every move you make is self defense and opposition, no time to worry about rules.

Look at her. See her breathing, an obvious struggle-one that she's winning. But how long can she win for, asks the enemy soldier, asks herself, asks the State Alchemist who gets the feeling that no answer is right, asks the Medic who thinks she has seen it all and thinks too quickly.

Look at her, and pretend you didn't look back as you walked away.

_Xx_

Zolfine J. Kimblee can hardly stand them, these spineless puppets of the Fuhrer who jump to get in the uniform but can't stand to get it covered in blood. And it's not just by a contrast against them that makes her love herself. After all, she's never met anyone she can bring herself to agree with or want to look out for or respect who didn't bear her name and face. It's not typical Central-queen narcissism or whatever you'd like to say to her this time. It's her common sense.

That's what everyone is lacking. Not her, though. (What is she lacking? Oh, such a question to ask a lady! No. Really. Crack the thin ice and let the blood and ashes out. What she really needs she doesn't have). That's where the Crimson (Crimson for ruthless, raw natural carnage) Lotus (Lotus for graceful, centered pleasure) Alchemist comes in, bringing her zealous, efficient bloodlust. And she knows what she signed up for. It's nothing short of revolting to her, being shoved in the same category as those who didn't, having to be around their unnervingly invasive gazes of misery as she watches them give wishes with their eyes.

That whore Mustang and that child soldier Hawkeye. When she sees them look at her it does something she can't quite describe, something she doesn't want to describe. Them and everyone else. They can't appreciate this for what it is, they retreat into drowning their sorrows and smothering their bodies. But Kimblee knows that substance and sex are just other sensual ways of waging war, and if you throw yourself into them looking for comfort, you will make matters worse.

That little cadet. He doesn't seem to like it so much, but he does seem like he knows what he's doing, how to tough it out. They could make quite a team, she decides. He wouldn't give into force, he'd use his head and arms; she's never needed to use force to get a point across except in extreme circumstances, except if you count war. He wouldn't give in to seduction; she's never needed to put out to draw in. No, she realizes, even her brand of persuasion won't sway him. That is why making him listen will be fun.

She has ways of making people listen. The ones around her now? They hate her for telling the truth. But she doesn't care about them. "I'm talking to you, schoolboy," she continues their much needed lecture. "This isn't how you like it, is it, now?" (_cruel words, immoral alchemist_! Say what you will. She calls it how she sees it.)

"I didn't come to be a killer," he says, unwavering voice, eyes cast down (stoic mourner, are you? Suffer in silence, that's the way to go). But he sees her face, sharp features, but her face makes itself look like she wants to help him, almost passing for the proverbial Nurse of the Battlefield. He doesn't trust her but can't look away.

See. She's right. If she plays the lady's card, soft and elegant, they won't notice her concealed weapons. They'll never agree, but they'll always come back to her to listen.

"Really? Such a waste, a fine young man like you. If I let my guard down, you might even be able to take me out. I've heard what you can do, sharpshooter," (sharp as a knife, he is), she gives her voice a soothing tone (soothsayer, hide and watch), "I'm sure you must feel proud. Accomplished. It's too bad, really." He looks ready to crack, but not as if he really will. Before he can say anything, Flame does, lunging her arm at Kimblee.

"_Don't talk to him_." (or what? Say it like you mean it.)

"All right, Mustang. Hawkeye. Every last one of you." No matter as to Mustang shoving her halfway to the ground, glaring at her as if she wants to kill her.

(Mustang thinks, _one day oh one day get her alone and you know how to do it you can burn her beyond recognition, they wouldn't find a single petal of the Crimson Lotus_)

She still has the upper hand, after all. "Look at me. You don't see me weeping or deserting or drinking smuggled whiskey until I pass out or getting in bed with any commanding officers. I know that I signed up to kill. Are you victims? None of you are. Next time you cut the strings and take a life, look them in the eye. Don't forget them. They will never forget you."

(Oh, sister in arms! Your words, you hardly know! When will you ever stop cutting your own strings, will you ever see before it's too late!)

She looks at Mustang as she says it, Mustang's face contorted with agonized hate, her hand will leave red marks over Kimblee's shoulder for around a day, most likely. Kimblee uses the back of her hand (give the palm a rest), before Mustang drops her, to hit her across the face. "You're pathetic. It's those like you that give us all a bad name," she says in a lowered voice, so only they two can hear. "Don't make me do that again," she says with a softened voice, expression, tilting her head upwards. "I've got to get going. Work," she says, light and bright, and sets off.

It is easy to say something, and harder to accept it.

_Xx_

Iron Priestess, Sister, as of now, innocent to the pleasure of vengeance, has heard the news. "Sister, you must come!" she urges. "The army, they're coming-"

"My right arm deconstructs and my left arm reconstructs," she replies, gazing at her arm like it matters. (Who cares now! There is a time and place for everything and what are you thinking, sister! There is nothing to restore now, it is not so easy to correctly look ahead).

The onlooker tells her, "this may look bad, but it can tear the Amestrians into bits. We'll get them back-" (sure, in hell, they will, she thinks. And how right she is!)

"I've spoken my mind to you, sister. And now I'm going to do it again before it's too late. You might have power but nobody will agree when you say it can help!" Right now it doesn't _matter _what tradition says or what her sister says, it's about-

It's about the fatal crash and billowing smoke not so far away. Amestris.

She is determined and physically capable, and the elders and children (and oh Creator what are you going to do with my sister) depend on those like her to drive the soldiers away.

"Please take my research, sister," says the Elder, gently looking to her.

"It's yours, isn't it?" she replies, knowing that is not what she meant and not wanting to know. Not wanting to be right this time.

"It won't be soon." But she doesn't have to explain what she means anymore, and it wouldn't matter because now she can't, not as an Amestrian is on top of a nearby house, lifting her hands. No, it doesn't matter now, as long as Heaven reigns superior, Earth will always interfere.

She puts her hands, symbols flipping upside-down (The Sun, the Moon), and there is no going back.

She falls to the ground and she will rise as a new person.

_Xx_

Just look at these two. Won't this be something? They won't see it coming.

The Stone sends vibrations through her as she tears the ground apart. It's her work, why shouldn't she enjoy it?

She locks eyes with the young priestess before she sees her fall, before she shuts her own eyes. Little does she know how true her words will be, served cold as vengeance, shoved down her throat like poison to choke her.

Oh, sister in arms, don't you see!

Oh, sister, you've just put one foot in the grave.


	4. The High Priestess

**I feel so bad for Winry's parents. =(**

**Uh…the symbolism/imagery/foreshadowing is just going to get freakier as it goes on. ;) **

_The occult, intuition, the forces of nature...safety, power over events, something hidden is revealed, bringing strength and the certainty of triumphing over evil. _**  
**

Why is she here on her back, just waking up? Is she even waking up? Wasn't she just a few seconds ago back in the village, escaping the military when all of a sudden just like fate there came a State Alchemist, sending shrapnel into all directions, into her face, and sister had tried to help her but-

(O, Creator, no matter where I go, do not leave me)

Her sister had looked at her and why was she so serene? She had to have known what she was doing, and yet she had given her life and her right arm (the arm that opens doors) and her death. She had practically begged her sister not to do it, but she's remembering it, so much for that, it looks like still her sister would not listen (_not even if her life depended on it_).

It doesn't even feel like her own. Well, of course it doesn't. (What can she do with this? This reminder, this won't give her the ability to forget, live normally…she doesn't need to. _She won't._) (If you forget, then you don't need to forgive. Why should she?) She doesn't even feel like her own self now, but oh my sister soon you will, you are so new to this state, half-in-half-out, it's only natural. In suspension, holding secrets and opening doors of the past. You will come to them when they have all but forgotten you; they will scarcely notice as you give them their fatal, final blow, fatal and final as you are, the scorpion of purgatory's desert…

And the arm clenches its fist, it jolts its way over the rough, thin contours of her body, and up to her face, and she can feel the dull pressure against her fingertips as she scrapes them over her scalp, drags them over her the thick, hot, stained gauze over her forehead and it's all _hers_ it's _hers_ all because of them, theirs to make but not theirs to take, not anymore, not when the one thing they wouldn't want her to have is already a part of her, its scar is barely a wound now and soon it will tell the story of all the battles it has seen and all those it has longed to fight-

(My right arm deconstructs, secrets clasped in the palms of my hand)

Hands, they take and make, destroy and now you see, sister, they can do all three. Yes, you heard me, use that new hand to open the door of the nation of sin and let your secrets of who it cannot make you be, you are not its specimen statistic, not anymore.

She is trying to place it all together, stitch an uneven quilt of memories that will never be cold in their graves, they seem to overlap into one another, waves abruptly crashing over each other around the eye of the first storm the world has ever known.

(A searing feeling under her shoulder, thick and melting and foreign. The movement ceases, but her own blood dries as it runs its course down her neck and into her mouth from the wound on her forehead. And from high on the building, the alchemist reaches out one hand, palm holding the sun that burns itself and beckons her into a new life.)

And her old one is dead. The eye that is not kept shut and masked behind bandages can see the wounded, fatally or not (is there a difference? Well, maybe she is a different case) groaning and writhing where they lie.

Two Amestrians. Two right next to each other, a man and a woman watch over them all she sees them (_o good Creator what do they want with me_), why are they looking at her like they have seen a ghost, why are they even here?

Soon, sister, your questions will be answered. Because the answers will be right there for you, there for you to take and make and destroy. They will answer themselves. No matter how badly you will live, you will have truth.

When she exhales, she can almost feel the quickening of her heartbeat come to a complete stop and when she inhales, shallow and from the throat, she can practically feel her body collapse.

And maybe if it does she will become a new entire being, maybe she should just die right here but then again that's what she's doing right now, for a second she can't recall her own name but why would she need to, not when nobody knows it? Maybe right now she is literally dying and not realizing it. Maybe she will get this arm amputated and try to go back (Go back to what?) before she needs to use it, before the military tries to get her to use it for them.

No, she isn't one of the old shamans or spirit-folk with their cards, talking of sealed fates and what is inside that you cannot escape (not if your life depends on it), but she knows some things _happen_ without anyone's stopping them, she won't let that go on, she can't-

Destruction and her Right Arm are coming alive. Before she can stand, she puts out the arm, it's almost its own being, and she looks at it as if she's convincing herself of making the right permanent choice, and before the doctors can do anything, her arm and her, they kill them.

(What has been done!) In many cruelly merciful ways, Urey and Sara Rockbell are free.

But she will not think of freedom, not as she looks around and sees what used to be a homeland but is not a ticking time bomb held in the burning hand of a shaking hand, and she won't be around to go down with it. This is no homeland of hers anymore, not anyone's, it is the grave of the front-line soldiers and rebels, their maze to go mad in trying to find a final destination (whose path?), not hers, not hers, no! (But madness has a way of finding us, no matter where our maze is.)

Letting the pain wash through her, letting its unnatural rawness echo through as if it can bring her closer to the holy if she feels more and reacts less, she stands up. Yes, you heard right, you cannot some people down (and some people end up bringing themselves down).

Sister wants-

Wanted, wanted. But really, can her want not carry on? Can't one's desire still reverberate after death? Stranger things have happened.

Sister wanted to keep the records. Well, now she has nothing better to do. She will be their keeper, keeper of sin and untold knowledge.

Would the military still want her? She wonders (if only you knew!) thinking if she just killed two of theirs (o Creator), if they hadn't wanted to finish the job then they must now. And she can't stay here anyway. Being lost in herself, that's one thing, being trapped with herself is another. And this by her own hands, which are not even her own? No? She can start anew. There is nothing left to rebuild from, only what she has just been given…

As fast as her legs can carry her and then she makes them go faster, (sister you are willful, she would have said, sometimes you must be) she leaves the space that barely passes for a hospital, leaves what is left of the village, ends up on the highest point she knows to go to. Nobody but her should come, she figures, nobody to stop her from leaving. Just her. And wherever she goes, that will be for the best.

It will all be for the better this way, she can't finish her thought, though, because just as she looks down, the entire village and then parts of the surrounding ones erupt in smoke and fire, the faint sounds of a woman's sharp laughter clashing with screams of pain.

Nothing left to pray for now. A Creator to pray to, but her life is a barren path.

A barren path that can only ever be filled with vengeance.

She will never rest again, whether or not she would have decided initially to turn away from her old life. But it is fine with her, because the brandishers of sin will not be given mercy or kindness or power and most certainly not rest. She will avenge the land of God with lashings from the devil's whip. She will rule herself with self discipline and severity and destruction served to everyone (even herself).

She will be the priestess made of iron, untouchable and still. The last rebel of Ishval. The Scorpion Lady, poisonous and calculating and unforgiving. She will be a scar on Ishval, a reminder that will never go away no matter how much they want to ignore her, no matter how much they pretend they don't feel her.

For vengeance alone she will survive.

And she looks the other way, away from what she knows to Amestris. It is like seeing a door in front of her. A door to hell and forgotten fates.

She will walk through and keep going.

_Xx_

Sister, I can see your sorrow. I cannot end what you feel, but I know it. I know where these thoughts you have come from and where they lead. This will drive you. This will harden and help you.

Let me see your present, your past, and your future.

Are you the IX of Swords, in a bed, always in pain and never at rest? You can twist that feeling to make it work for you.

Are you the Lover, unity and peace? No? Good.

You can be a formidable, wise, Queen of Cups. A conclusive, transitioning, strict Death. Judgement.

And here I am, holding the secrets of wisdom and fate, striving for the holy and never reaching it entirely, opening the scroll of the unchangeable. I have the crescent moon at my feet, and at my feet are the fallen in battle. The Soldier, me, you, the High Priestess.


	5. The Chariot

**Notice how as a female Scar carries some more guilt about not being able to save her sister. :P**

**Yes. Marcoh. I went there. (Olivier's going to be an Oliver. And that's not the end of it. :D )**

_The material currents which carry man along...unexpected news, conquest. It also means word spread abroad by word of mouth...a timely good word or slander._**  
**

Haven't you heard?

Amestrian citizen, the nation is being shaken.

Well, hopefully not, you see, it looks just _horrible_ to have a powerful nation such as ours up in arms over some disorganization like this. That's what they're all saying. They don't like the idea of their military being at the opposite end of threats, especially when these threats play out in actions, especially carried out by someone like _her._ It just can't be possible that Central would be challenged by…a lone Ishvalan woman a few years after a war that should have shut all the red eyes, a war that should have silenced all thoughts of opposition. And, citizens, you probably don't think it's possible.

Not yet.

_Xx_

Let's go back a little. Time can do a lot to help you understand, just normally, it doesn't want to.

Well, hesitating won't do anything, she thinks and decides that if the choice is between now and later she'd rather just get started sooner. Procrastination may not always be harmful, but it's never really helpful. Now or never. It's been long enough. This need for vengeance is going to consume her entirely like the sun eclipsing and burning the moon, it will happen one way or another, and she won't let it happen before she gets what she came for. She's let enough happen already.

(or maybe she didn't _let_ it happen. After all, anyone could have been under that building in that region at that time and still not have been able to do anything; but she could have done something or other…even if she didn't do anything, what could she have done? Victim or survivor or weakling? By walking the streets of Central, she's risking being hit by a reckless driver, just like everyone else going about their business. By staying in Amestris, she's risking being attacked in the looming threat of a Drachman invasion. Who is to blame? She can't let anyone she knows find out it's _her_ who carries her sister's arm and the only remainder of her life. But then again, they're dead now. Was she weak? Is she now? There's nobody to tell her one way or another, what does that word even mean?)

Well, whatever happens, she can't let a soul in area right now know her race. So she wears a long jacket to cover her desert-brown skin, sunglasses to hide her eyes (red as vengeance, red as nature), a scarf over her white (the color of death and purity) hair. Mystery. That sort of look is in fashion these days, anyway. Hide in the open, give them a real un-show. Starring the future Vengeance of Ishval as the present Average Central Citizen. How ironic. She doesn't care.

Nobody gives her a second look, and few give her a first, as it was before, almost. But now it's different. She has the sneaking suspicion that something will go wrong, whether for her or her plan or someone else, as it always does for women like her. Now she's a _woman like her. _

She walks every step of the staircase to the Central library, as if each one holds the most important knowledge she could ever hope to come across. As of now, she doesn't know the half of it. But that isn't exactly her fault. Whether or not we know what is important, we don't usually think about it until we need to. Or until it's too late.

But she isn't going to wait, so there will be no too late. Not anymore. Of course it's the alchemist's fault that she has the scar, and that her village is wasteland. Of course it's her own fault that the doctors are dead.

(And is it her own fault too that sister is dead? Not entirely, no, there's the Fuhrer and the alchemist who have their names on the blame; it's also their fault that she may as well have killed her own sister. Because that's what happened, isn't it? Yes, yes, sacrifice and all. She could have refused. She'll never forgive them, but not herself either. She can live without forgiveness.

How else is she to live?)

She walks into the Central library now, carefully opening the door as if attempting to steal it for how quiet she is, after all, the more silent you are, (the more you are heard) the more you can hear. Because you're listening, not seeking any specific words; the words seek you.

Before any of the librarians can see her-no, it wouldn't cause her any big problems but it would definitely get in her way-, she slips past the entrance and searches for government records. The few people there don't seem to notice her, and if they do, they don't care. People never seem to care until they realize they should have.

The shelves are tall and musk-scented, enveloping her in their facts and figures like they want to put some sort of lawful enchantment over her. But she will be the desert's ancient mystery and the nation's rigid brutality and the war's toxic remnant. Nothing will envelope her anymore. She will meld.

She will not always stay, but she will leave her mark.

Oh, sister, see THIS shelf. Literally, it's at your fingertips, all the tangible information about your enemies. Will it feel painful, going through it all? You won't think so. That's how you'll be able to survive. You'll expect seeing what you don't want to see. You'll accept it, take it all in.

There's a history of the State Alchemist system, and the rules and regulations of State Alchemy. And then the records. From a hundred years ago, from fifty, from _now._ Well, not now, now as in the latest record from a few years ago and not this exact second, but time doesn't care about technical limits.

All their names, public information. Title, alchemy style, you know how it goes.

_(Tina Marcoh, Crystal Alchemist) _She's heard the name somewhere. Now or then. But she hasn't seen this alchemist, aged and serious and weary, not appearing as if she'd be halfway capable of commanding what had been done to her people. But then again, without her arm, she'd be powered just by will and that's no power at all, really.

_(Alex Armstrong, Strong-Arm Alchemist) _This face looks somehow familiar. Though his arms aren't visible, he looks like he lives up to his title, and she gets the feeling that showing him her vengeance would be easier said than done. Actions and words both prove, though, one proves what we can do and one proves what we're willing to do, something like that, she knows that rules have exceptions.

_(Rochelle Mustang, Flame Alchemist) _Despite her name, full of invincible heat, this woman's face brings a cold feeling. A feeling that she's looking at the face of someone who knows war on a first name basis (like her). She's heard of the regions incinerated in minutes. Time is ruthless. And this woman looks the same, looks like she's become so out of necessity.

And she looks through the pages of men and women, young and not so young, new and high-ranking, known and those whose names she will probably never look at again. Looks until she finds who she's looking for (you won't have to look to find her, some fates are sealed and you've already done all the work). Expression created like a detailed mask barely hiding the face of a killer, and from the paper, the glinting venom eyes seem to peer out at her (you can see me? Can you really? _She can't really see her, not now, and there are parts of her she never will see_).

_(Zolfine J. Kimblee, Crimson Lotus Alchemist) _She looks like she's playing innocent and like she loves to play the role. There are only so many faces you can put on and the Crimson Lotus Alchemist appears to know how to play that game (well, if an alchemist can, so can a scorpion-lady). Looking at this face, she feels an onslaught of viciousness. (I've found you, all your comrades and you most of all. You destroyed my homeland and killed my sister and then you may as well have killed me. You'll know I'm coming for you, whether you remember or not, stay waiting.)

She looks to see nobody's watching, and hides the papers underneath her coat. She needs them better than the library does right now. She looks down at her right arm, flexes the fingers and claps her hands together.

They may as well have forgotten her. But she knows who they are now. And she hasn't forgotten them. And soon enough, none of them will be able to get her and her influence away from them. Not if their lives depend on it.


	6. Judgment

**This chapter has so much that is messed up about it…lol.**

**Thank you, internet manga sites, for letting me reread stuff so I can remember in order to recreate scenes.**

…**Nina :'(**

_The call of man to a higher state. His tendencies and desires to raise himself above the physical plane...fame of an intellectual order._**  
**

A certain feeling of liberation comes when not a single person in the country knows her name. (Well, not in the sense where she feels free, she's far from that but nobody controls her anymore.)

None of them know her name, origin, age, or personality; and they are not even sure of her objectives or reasons for doing what she does, but you know how people talk, give them enough time and they'll come up with a truth they like more than not knowing. Some say she's a madwoman who thinks the State Alchemists are demons. Some say she's an assassin of the Ishvalan rebels. Some say she was a comfort woman during the war. Some say she's a ghost. Some say she doesn't even exist and the government has made her up so that people trust the Ishvalans even less.

Any one of those stories could be true. She doesn't doubt that they'd be interesting, but she's never around to confirm or deny one way or the other. She's like a spirit haunting Amestris, the ghost of Ishval (that story is true, in a way). She appears where they don't want to be and drags their human weapons to whichever she lets them pray for acceptance to before dying, and she is gone before anyone realizes she was there. Now you see her, now you don't, now you see her, now you may never will again. Evasive? Maybe not entirely on purpose. But she only ever stays to leave a dead alchemist and ruptured earth, and maybe a witness or two who saw an Ishvalan with a scarred forehead.

Some people say they were witnesses to her committing robberies or murders of civilians. Some say she kills the alchemists, but not with alchemy. Some say she seduces her victims so she can get close to them. Some say she doesn't have red eyes- she's blind.

They would all be interesting stories if they were true, she thinks.

_Xx_

Kimblee is a blade and prison sharpens her, it makes her too small and too thin but it makes her more lethal, more ready and willing to attack. She always was, but she really does want to have a nice meeting with whoever approved her incarceration, it's almost as if they locked her up to see if she could get out. Well, that day hasn't come. It will.

Alone with your mind sister, and what do you find? They could have chosen anyone, she rationalizes, and they chose to make her, out of everyone in the entire war, the designated criminal. Well, fine. If they do this to her, then she'll go ahead and play that role with no second thoughts.

(She'll have those later, though.)

_Oh my sister feel my secrets inside of you_ the Stone is saying _you can take my power and I will take your pain,_ coursing its energy through her body, limbs and head and center, like the universe has found her _all the souls have waited _a hundred thousand souls are housed inside her, _let me feel you sister I will take all your pain I will give you feeling like you've never felt before _

As she swallows the Stone, the beautiful almighty Stone, she swallows down all her thoughts of desperation and entrapment, and they all stay inside her.

_(sister I'm your home and shelter and prison)_

_XX_

She's killed a few of them so far. The first one was a low ranked officer with rock powers who had only come to the war at the very end. It had been surreal before, during, and after the killing. The second one had been difficult, until she realized that her point of no return had come and gone long, long, ago, and she was better off realizing it.

She lives in secret, almost, covering her eyes at all times or keeping secluded or just in the dark (abandoned buildings filled with broken windows and unused staircases; alleys where people like her are said to lurk and it makes her think of the old expression _there are two kinds of women_ and it gives her apathy and she thinks to herself, maybe I'll be both kinds, because she may as well defy that, too.

What kind of a life is this? Endless searching, necessary endurance, sacrifice. The path of vengeance. The cold of Amestrian nights makes her body energized and hardened and the feeling of hunger is like a cold knife, making her alert and light and free, an immune overseer of pain, not needing rest, and her hands feel the straight, steely ribcage bones coming out further and further from her chest, and it's like touching a shield.

It will all be worth it, she does not need to force herself to think.

_Xx_

The alley is not silent. Well, they rarely are, what with cats and birds and who knows what sort of gangsters or thieves she always manages to scare off. (It must be her face. _You'd look nice if you weren't so harsh_ they'd tell her long ago, now that half her face is scar tissue they imagine what sort of fight a woman like her would have to get into to have that face. )

No, it isn't silent, not at all. There's some kind of awful sort of noise coming from the other end. Almost like the crying of a dying child, almost like the groans of a wounded animal (she's known the sounds of both). The sound is slow and deep and halting as if it hurts making it. And for a moment, she barely even thinks to wonder what the noise could be or who it comes from, all she does is listen as if it's the only thing worth doing. But she snaps out of the feeling (she will command herself to not feel).

She tries to be as quiet as possible as she moves down the alley, her shoes dragging through stagnant rainwater and dirt and broken rocks. Whatever it is, she's not prepared for it. A child? She hopes not. Yes, she's a killer, but she doesn't know how to handle finding an abandoned child.

And then she sees it. At first she thinks it must be an old dog and her ears were deceiving her, but she sees its _hair_ and it _turns around_ and it is not old or entirely a dog and it has a human's eyes and a little girl's voice saying _where is brother what happened_ and_ please _and for a moment she can't move. Because here is just another time where the world seems to be trying to tell her specifically that alchemy is wrong, but more importantly, it holds ultimate power. Having the abilities and makes you manipulate nature like a servant and not having it makes you a walking target. It almost feels like she isn't inside her own body as she walks closer and closer, then she kneels on the ground, putting her face at the level of its or her forehead. She shouldn't do this, but she can't let what would happen become reality, from what she knows about this country (she knows all she needs to) she knows this child's life, if it hasn't already, would not be able to be called a life if she walks away.

In her hand she holds the only mercy possible and one of many tortures, and (why does it have to be her) she almost doesn't want it. She can't imagine how or why the Creator would let her wield this power, but then again, as long as Heaven reigns superior, Earth will always interfere. She holds a double edged blade that will send this child and animal to heaven (and seal her in a tomb in hell), and she has no right and no choice but to do this. Say what you will. She didn't anticipate anything like this.

(She notices she's been stroking the creature's face, and before she can change her mind, she goes ahead, praying for it and puts her head to its forehead and bites her other hand and she can't look away.)

There's blood all over the wall and ground, its salty smell soaking her and it tells her (you can only deconstruct.) Amestris talks of killers, well, it had better be prepared for one.

She will kill every last of the State Alchemists. When she finds whoever is responsible for _this_, it will be one of the two killings she will ever truly look forward to.

She stands up and steadies herself against the wall of the alley but how can she just walk away from this? She's kneeling on the ground in the blood and rainwater and she's praying why is she praying there are a thousand reasons for her to pray and a thousand and one reasons not to. How long has she been on the ground? She can't tell, she makes herself feel all the time but she hasn't truly been made to feel in so long, since she became who she is now.

Yet another new age, Amestris. You ask where she is and who she is and why she kills? Call all you want, she'll never answer, but you'll answer to your fate.

_Xx_

"Hey lady, you can't get past here," says the government worker, he's barely noticing her as she walks by, doesn't notice how her jacket just barely covers her face, doesn't notice anything but what he gets paid to notice. She keeps walking. "Did you hear me? Authorized individuals only!"

"I'm going in," she says, unemotional and unflinching because if that is how you face the world everything comes along fine, past the tape and front door, into the Sewing-Life Alchemist's house. Sewing Life, sewing together uneven stitches that get pulled and tied and then they break and everything comes apart, sewing lives, sewing memories, sewing uneven bits of irreparable damage.

At first when Shou Tucker looks at her he doesn't even seem to see her, his eyes are clouded with a strange form of misery and disorientation which she can't quite memorize. "Who are you?" he manages to say, but she doesn't answer.

"Alchemists who defy God must die," she tells him, and Shou Tucker knows who this is now, understands why it was only a matter of time before alchemy's gears crushed him whether by the military or himself or somewhere else, and even though he wishes he could have done what he thought he needed to do to Nina to _her_ right now, he almost doesn't object, almost doesn't even mind as she goes in for him, tearing open his eyes and head and before he dies he sees her face and she looks enraged but he's seen a face that anguished and desperate (in the mirror) but he doesn't want to recognize that in himself.

And she's all that's left. All the Tuckers, even the dog, are all not only dead, but have been killed. She sees the family pictures on the wall and tabletops and she can feel the ceiling coming down on her, so it's a good thing for everyone especially her that she never stays long, and she doesn't look back as she leaves through a window, she doesn't look back as she goes into Central, into the secret-embedded maze of seductive fates that is Central City.

_Xx_

"Ma'am, this is yet another State Alchemist killed by this Scar," Lieutenant Rizen Hawkeye says. He's come a long way since the war but the war has remained right where it started out- inside him. He isn't surprised by it, if you ask him, which nobody will. Nobody wants to see it, but it's true. It's only natural that the Ishvalans would want revenge, and after what he's done, he can't really condemn this woman.

But he can take care of himself, and he isn't worried, he doesn't live in fear of red eyes that watch like guardians of mythic torture. It's a time of conflict, which is all the more reason to keep calm.

Colonel Rochelle Mustang nods, and all must go well, and all will go well if she stays calm and strong, she wills herself to think, (she knows with her skills she can take down most contenders, there is a lot to be said about her but she has power) but there are always possibilities as to what can go wrong and what already has gone wrong.

She doesn't feel that it's the correct time to think like that.

Except it is, State-sister-Alchemist. It's the exact time to think like that.


	7. The Wheel of Fortune

**I had a hard time with this chapter. :P**

**As I write this, I find that there are distinct differences in the characters who I've gender bent. If you have any suggestions as to what you think would be different, whether plot point or personality, I am open to hearing them.**

_Evolution...the events which occur in the life of the seeker are not stable. They move towards change. _**  
**

As fate would have it (and seeing how it always gets what it wants, there's a lot to be said about that expression) she falls right into their sight, or maybe she intends it that way. Whatever it is, one minute Maes Hughes is just waiting to see what will happen next and (because with alchemy, that's really all you can do) and the next minute this woman who looks like literal hell with her scarred forehead and too-large jacket like a shroud and her knotted white hair plastered against her in the rain, her right arm clutched in her left hand and her hand's bones are protruding out from her hand and he says "that's _got_ to be her" to Mustang and Hawkeye and everyone else. Ishval isn't something he particularly enjoys remembering, but in this profession, he's learned to do what's necessary, whether he wants to or not.

"I can take care of this," Mustang replies, and he knows she probably can. Because she's one of those people who makes herself take care of what nobody else can, even if she's barely able to herself. That's one of the reasons why he's so close to her, even though he can tell it's a quality that will one day hurt her. But that isn't something he can tell her; that isn't something you say. He cares about her, of course, she's his closest friend (and if Gracia had never came around- well, he would never finish that thought, but you can) and they've stood by each other since military training. He stands by her when she needs him, but he walks away when it's best for everyone. Yes, there are his instincts that make him want to protect, but alchemy is something he knows he is better off not involving himself in, no matter what convention says. "You're right," he tells her, deceiving himself with a partially crafted smile, "I'm not sticking around for this freak show."

He's right, that's what it is. Alchemy is a freak show and when you're in it, you can be exploited by it, becoming bound by its boundless destruction or you can exploit it, using its each and every trick to your benefit (and then you can do both).

She walks away.

_Xx_

She sets her eyes on the two girls, one small and determined looking, the other wearing a massive suit of armor. "Fullmetal Alchemist," she says and her voice is accented and harsh and she sounds like she's on the front line of eternal war. She looks to the suit of armor as she says this, wondering if she's correct. Before anyone can do anything else Edwina steps forward. "What do you want from me!" she yells and it really is an unusual circumstance. What does she want? Well, nowadays she's between wanting her old life (a life that was falling apart at its hinges anyway) and not caring if she wakes up or not. Fast life, slow death. She can get used to it because she realizes that you need to adapt in this world or else you just seal your fate. Well, she's already done that, but the same endings come from different stories and nobody sees it coming because they don't want to.

"It is my duty to Ishvala to kill all you State Alchemists," she replies as she tears off her sunglasses in a gesture that looks rough compared with her appearance, and her eyes are red (the color of desire and war) and her name is Scar as far as anyone else is concerned.

Edwina looks to her sister in horror and yells "Alice, run!" before getting her hands together at the ready. But her sister doesn't move.

"Sister, are you crazy?" says the younger sister, her voice is soft but she has a hard demeanor. "I'm not leaving you behind!"

And she- Scar, of course, what else can she be called? (you'd be surprised who you can be when you have no identity) Well, she is still for a second. She decides if she's going to be misrepresented she may as well be up front about her intentions. "Fullmetal," she says, cold as an abandoned desert, "I will eliminate all threats and obstacles," and she doesn't soften her face or voice since she's nearly forgotten how, despite expectations by the government (in no time she'll realize she's wasting her time, in no time she'll say she's sorry and we'll never need to think about this again) but she's never been what people expect, but she does say "I will spare your sister." Let them say it's intrinsic passivity, giving up, let them say whatever they will say. She'll never tell the truth, never expose her motives because they're her business. She is vengeance but she will try as best as she can to be justice as well. That was her original intent, but things often don't go as planned. Nobody likes to admit it but she doesn't have to admit anything. _ She_ is the maker of mistakes and _Scar_ is a mistake. She can't afford to be any more.

"How can I trust you?" the older sister snaps as she steps in place.

"I'll keep my word," she answers, she always does, no more and no less (she always keeps her word one way or another). And then she slams her right hand into the wall which crashes out and in all directions and the ground is torn in pieces and Edwina screams "what the hell are you doing, you crazy bitch" and it's nothing she isn't used to. She's been named 'bitch' for years and it's lost all meaning, even though it probably should get a reaction; some say she is mad anyway; and it isn't the first time and it won't be the last time the structures around her have shattered up and out, whether by her hand or not. Crazy bitch? Sure, if that's what it takes to survive. (Sometimes it does, and sometimes you don't have a chance anyway. Bitch, maybe that's why you've gone crazy.)

Edwina retaliates, roaring as she claps her hands together (there is something very strange about this country's alchemy) but her red eyed opponent is too quick (always running) she runs like her life depends on it but she doesn't look afraid because she isn't and more importantly she can't. It must look like the city is collapsing bit by bit as Edwina makes her way over to Scar.

"Your hands. You weren't using a circle," she says, before Edwina can move, her arm is in Scar's hand and then every little bolt and functioning scrap is coming detached and destroyed, and the rusted dagger of Ishval that is Scar puts her hand against Alice and her right arm of destruction lives up to the name as Alice screams.

And she's running again.

_Xx_

"Give it up, Scar," says the woman at the center of the group of soldiers. Scar. Right. It still takes getting used to, not the name, but being referred to.

The woman is Rochelle Mustang, and she looks the same as she does in the picture but her face carries self assurance that she can tell is partially false. Not that she'd say anything. It isn't the right time and it never will be.

"You should know better than to challenge the Flame Alchemist," she says and for a moment she believes herself, believes she truly is a force to be reckoned with and not a weak excuse for a soldier giving all the other women a bad name and living up to all the wrong expectations, she believes that she can really trap Scar and then she realizes that people with that sort of drive don't back down so easily. She notices the Ishvalan moving quickly to avoid Hawkeye's bullet, but it slides across the side of her head (she doesn't even notice the blood until it drips into her mouth).

"Rochelle Mustang. What a day this is, finding both you and Fullmetal!" she says. And then a familiar looking man comes in, and _Scar_ barely notices him until after she ducks to avoid his gauntlet-like metal weapons coming from his hand. "I regret having to fight a lady," he says (inwardly, she's almost amused) "but I am the Strong-Arm Alchemist, Alex Armstrong, and I will serve this country." And he notices she's not running. Either she's brave or just doesn't care. "You have courage but I don't know if you are a match to me," he says, and he's saying how creating and destroying is what makes the world go round and all she hears is his words.

And she's running, and they're saying "you can't get away with this, not this time," and she's telling them-

"Actually, I think I am," and her ragged breathing contrasts with her calm diction and she moves quick like a ray of light. She breaks open a gaping hole in the ground and hurls herself into the sewer, if any of them follow her (not that she expects them to) she can definitely stand a chance in the darkness, the dark and unguarded underground types of places she knows as a home.

"Get back here!" Mustang yells, and a chorus of "quit playing around with us" and "you must be insane" and "you can't keep fooling with us like this" (but she has been, hasn't she, all along just by being who she is? Nobody expects the women to find their rage and make it their ally and make forgiveness a foreign concept, people don't know what to expect now).

And the cavernous tunnel of the sewer is murky as it is dark and she is swallowed up I in it, not needing to fight a battle or lend falsely supportive words. Here, she is as she is. She is not Scar or the bearer of any dead name, she does not have to be anyone and there is nobody to give her any identity. It makes her wonder how long the tunnel is, how long this momentary state will last (how far she will go). But she doesn't know. She has a list of names as her only plan, as if her desire will be easily achieved. She doesn't care about it being easy, though, she can tell that the snare will only become a tighter fit as she keeps going. But she still keeps going. Because she knows how to deal, because she has to, because her life is a storm and she gets through it by taking all the necessary precautions. She does what she has to do at any and all costs. That may be something she should repent for, but women like her, they are past repentance, _(futile sin) _and she walks like she doesn't mind that, not one bit, like she doesn't care what happens to her one way or the other and maybe she doesn't. To an extent, she must feel this way.

Well, she will not repent. She is too far gone and repenting might make her look better, more sympathetic to Amestrian audiences and the press and whoever is listening, but she's not going to apologize.

She hears a strange noise, a childlike laugh and it's louder, almost as if someone is walking towards her and then she hears whoever he is say- "I smell a skin-and-bones Ishvalan woman," and she looks no further than right in front of her, seeing not too far away round, inhuman eyes gaping vacantly at her.

Whoever they belong to, he lunges forward.

But he can't keep up with her and she presses herself against the wall, tearing a hole through it so she can escape, because escaping has never been on her list of top priorities and it never will be but it's always been something she knows how to do, she's running now and she looks behind her shoulder and she can see whoever _he _is (he's running on all fours and his tongue is sticking out of his mouth and has this tattoo on it), and as she runs, something slices open one of the walls nearby her. It appears to be a lance working its way through the stone, but she sees it's no lance it's someone's _finger_, a woman coming out from the wall and _all _of her fingers are like that, and the woman parts her lips in some sort of anticipating smile as she shoots out two of her fingers, sticking them into the wall (one on each side of her waist and she's trapped). "Well, hello, miss," says the woman, "it's nice to finally get acquainted with you."

And she's breathing harder than is healthy, harder than she knows she should be showing an enemy, whoever these two are, whoever in hell they could possibly be and she's rapidly deconstructing the wall behind her before the man can say he's hungry (I am too, she wants to scream, now leave me) and before the woman can get any closer, she's running, she's good at that. It's second nature- she runs from death and her old life, she runs because it's all she knows (always running) (and during the war there were always close calls), and she was made to run (all the young women like her had to remember that if they were out at night and anything should happen, to fight and if that didn't work run like your life depended on it and if that didn't work _which, if you look at a different circumstance, it didn't _then that was just your problem). Her world is imperfect but it's all she has, and they were right, that is her problem (and a select few government workers').

She's breathing so hard she worries if she'll be able to catch her breath and she wonders if she's finally lost them.

And then she collapses and is carried away by the tunnel, fate in the form of escape.


	8. The Sun

**So I said I'd update sooner this time and I did : )**

**I…did not think this would come along as quick as it is. **

_Universal radiance...elements of triumph and success in whatever circumstances one finds oneself. _**  
**

(Sleep shunts her around. The woman's fingers, gloved and long, seem to want to enclose her and she can feel how sharp they are as they dig into her side through her clothes. She opens her eyes and they are a rich violet, a surreal and overpowering color that seems to told the kind of secrets that would make a normal person lose their mind, that being the best possible reaction. Her face leers closer as the large man's laughter grows more fast-paced because soon enough they'll have what they want-

The woman smiles wider and her teeth are pointed and they seem to want to have her dirt-smeared brown skin in between them because she looks so vulnerable right there and this woman looks mad and crafted hell knows what her life could be like (hell does know and Lust the Homunculus has her own issues to sort out) and oh look it seems her face is melting into a familiar Ishvalan face with eyeglasses _see me sister you can't ever run from me and I'm all gone so what does that make you?_

And why is she involved in this, who is she that she would be a part of whatever affairs could possibly be going on here? They can't possibly work for the military and this just doesn't make any sense but it will, because it all will in time, when you put together all the fragile shards you can see the clear reflection.)

She wakes up before she opens her eyes, on her back, and it is hot and humid and there is smoke in the air. She almost doesn't want to have to wake up because the last time she awoke and couldn't remember what had happened before-

Well, sometimes she looks back on that day and wishes she just _hadn't been able_ to wake up. Yes, that's right, she'll never say such a thought out loud and she'll never really want to examine it but when only one thing drives you everything else just weighs you down and compresses your lungs and lurks around corners to jump at you when you least expect it and when you most expect it but can't do anything about it. She is grateful to keep her life but can barely call it a life. But that is fine with her. She wouldn't have it any other way because now she has nothing to lose. Well, at least, she has much less to worry about losing.

She decides she's going to get up (she can sleep in hell) before she lets any more time go to waste because you know how that ageless enchantress does whatever she wants and if you waste her she wastes you, before she just stands by as more events go by and she is made into their casualty (you careless bitch _what _have you gotten yourself into this time how can you expect to avenge your people when you can't even escape without nearly getting yourself killed you weakling, she thinks). Upon opening her eyes, she sees a young child.

His eyes, she notices, are as wide and innocent as they are red.

"Hey miss," says the little boy, "we were wondering when you were going to wake up because I thought you were dead but nobody else did. Are you all right?" As she listens to him the panic rises with each of his words but she just makes sure to keep _it_ down (there is no place here for hysteria you overreacting _weak _woman how could you have gotten yourself into this kind of situation whatever it is what did you _do_, she thinks to herself again). She tries to focus on his eyes. A warm red, they don't bring any specific memories to her, therefore they are the _good_ kind of red eyes, meaning she can look into them and not feel loss. She tries to focus on breathing as well (there is a distinct feeling in her that it's something new, breathing, like she'd better do as much of it as possible since it would be such a waste not to).

She realizes she hasn't said anything and doesn't want the child to think she's lost her head (well, maybe she has, where is she anyway, and why? This happened once before and now again and that's bad enough, and even worse since then and now make two and these things happen in threes). Though it feels like the makeshift room around her is distorting its dimensions and spinning in a thousand different directions all at once like it's trying to see how much she can take before she gives in and becomes part of the scene of madness, she speaks anyway. "I suppose," she tells him. "Where am I?"

"The slums outside of East City," he says as if he's happy about it, which, at his age, there's only so much he can comprehend no matter what he's seen, and he's _seen_. "I've never seen a lady floating in a sewer before. You're Ishvalan, right?"

Her mouth drops open. Yeah, kid, I think you just woke her up.

The young boy, Rick, looks at her closely, right in the eyes. He stares but she doesn't mind. All she can think to do is shake her head yes. It's one question she doesn't have to ask herself. "We all are around here. Hey, Grandpa!" he yells and he's loud enough that the sound of his voice bring her further back to his senses. After a few moments an old man walks in. She's never met him but Ishval is a large desert and it's a small world. She makes eye contact with the old man and he says then to her, "you're the lady fugitive who's wanted all over for killing those State Alchemists?" and she almost freezes (her own people don't even want her now, she thinks, but it's not as if she expected anything else and she's prepared and all but still _but still nothing bitch you walked into this). _So she composes herself, because she doesn't have the energy to do anything else and she's trying to keep out any and all emotion. "Are you going to turn me in?"

And he looks gently at her like he wants to protect her (which he is, so it's sort of like he wants to comfort her, well isn't that a bit misplaced). "You don't seem as bad as they say," he says, "have you heard some of the stories going around about you?" she has and wonders what he's heard and if any of their stories are true. "Either way, you're our blood and you may stay."

It's too much and she doesn't deserve it and she can't go on listening to him talk as if she's something she's not. But she does, because her blood is here, even though more of it is on the hands of Amestrians and all around her on the ground of makeshift battlefields. She does, because she loves her people and that's really why she does what she does, at least that's the main reason. She listens. Who wouldn't?

"This is one of the many slums around here populated by living Ishvalans," he says and now she's at least somewhat included in something. Not really. She could never stay longer than absolutely necessary but she almost wants to as the old man describes their lives and as the child adds all sorts of details that almost cause her pain. But it isn't important what she wants in passing because she is only allowed to want what she can have and this _isn't _meant for her, not for anyone like _her_. She can only want the one thing she can have, she's almost done taking it, but that won't matter soon.

And she doesn't notice as she's listening how just for a moment her mouth turns up.

She decides that she can't be on her back forever and tries to move up, but stops. "Is…my right arm still here?" she asks. (if anything let that be there I can feel it but you still feel them sometimes after they're gone but anyway whatever happens I'll find a way if I have to tear their hearts out with one hand) And Rick gives her the kind of smile only a child has, the kind that shows he's innocent to the ways of paths like hers. There's no reason to, and yet he does, because he's just a kid and doesn't quite get that being nice to someone won't make them rid of their problems. "Whatever happened to you, it got hurt really bad, but you'll be fine, I promise. You just have to be more careful."

Rick stares at her arm again and she considers asking didn't anyone ever tell him it isn't nice to stare but she declines. Besides, back when it wasn't on her body she was always staring at it. It was horrifying and elaborate and hypnotizing and forbidden with the secret craft of earthly desires, impure or not, and now that they're all hers, it's all the more entrancing. And since she's not going to tell her story because that just isn't fair to them, she just says, "it's something important that was given to me by my family," and she says it to her arm as if she sees something new within it.

_Xx_

She has a visitor. Out of all the people in the world (and that really is saying something) she never expected her old Master to come because that was so far away and so long ago and she _saw _the explosion. But she should have died too. Close calls and strange occurrences always happen.

"I hear you've been killing the military members," she says to her in that familiar (familiarity, in her life, is never good) and subtle yet domineering voice that suggests she knows what she hears and knows it to be the _truth _because moral ears know truth from filth. She isn't doing it to boast superiority; it's just how she is.

She doesn't _regret_ her path, not really, but she knows that even thinking of setting off on it makes her (she knows what she is, from every formal classification to every unrepeatable insult, and she never keeps that too far from her mind because she always needs to _remember who she is at all times_).

"What you're doing won't help. You don't need to forgive, but if you're trying to break the chains of hatred, the only way to do it is to endure. Stop the slaughter. It's not forgiveness, it's breaking the cycle." And maybe it is, that very well could make a good ending to her story, just close your eyes and picture it- she right then and right there decides that she's done wrongsowrong and she stays in this village and helps to make it a nicer place and finds a home among her people and eventually all the Amestrians and Ishvalans come to love one another, and this sister of the sand has a self she can create rather than her self creating her. Sure. Chains have links, little pieces making each other stronger, they're all joined and you can break one but you still have the rest, that chain binds her to hell but it is _long _and cold and heavy, not quite like an advising regent and not quite like a rough lover, and she's wrapping it around herself and using all the rest to wrap her enemies too, tight fit that they can't escape from because they should have been prepared anyway, these chains are tight but that is fine. The chain will break them all, and not the other way around.

She nods her head and looks down, a gesture of understanding and submission. "It's too late for me now," she says with no intonation, and maybe it's too early as well, or maybe _someone _had to do this and it was just she who had the idea as a coincidence (there are no coincidences let me tell you that sister and you better listen because Fate opens her mouth only when she does and you better listen because one day when you don't hear oh sister it's been too late for you already). Whatever you say, she is not turning back, no matter how much she hates herself for it and no matter how much she is empowered by it. She has nowhere else to turn to but vengeance. Vengeance is like a worn but able soldier, giving her shelter, saying "come and stay a while and you'll not need to leave" because she has nowhere else but her shelter and no other option is good anyway. It's a raging, flaming war between all the sides so nobody's the worst, sister, and we're all better off ready, so you need to be prepared for combat because you _will _be on that front line.

She has the decency to keep silent until the Master leaves.

_Xx_

It was about time she left anyway. There was a whole lot of commotion, which she's been used to since before the war. No big deal. There are worse things that could happen besides almost getting arrested. And she almost is disbelieving herself for traveling with Yoki, the man who almost turned her in, but he's useful and there's no reason why not. It's not as if he'll try and turn her in again, because Yoki is afraid of her whether he likes to admit it or not.

("You do know how dangerous it is for you out here all alone," he had said to her one of the nights when she went off as she always does and she knew what he meant, but then it made her think how it wasn't safe when she was out with her sister in the middle of the day out in the open, so who really cares? Not her.)

"I can't keep calling you Ms. Scar," Yoki says in his well-I'm-just-trying-to-be-reasonable voice (he's aggravating but she knows how it is to be the one nobody listens to and maybe that's why she keeps him around.) "What's your real name?"

She says it like she'll explain it once but not once more because she's an enigma and that's one of the bits of the identity she has left. "Ishvalans take pride in their names because they are given to us from God. But after what happened I was not the same and I set off for a life that was as far away from God as possible. So I took my name and all that I had and I _cast it away_."

She's horribly strange but Yoki can't help trying to piece together all the shards of her story in his mind, even though he thinks it's got to be an unpleasant story, so he just keeps on going.

Saying it out loud makes her think whether or not she was the one with the power. Did she have her life stolen or did she cast it away? Who knows. Who even knows but the Creator, because that life isn't around for her to know anything about it anymore.


	9. The Hermit

**Lol, I almost forgot about Comanche XD**

_The inner life...secret which will be revealed._

It's a dark, quiet night in the streets of Central. And who's out on these streets on nights like this? Not many people. Criminals who don't understand that committing a crime is most efficiently done in the open, people who are down on their luck and have no roof but the cruel and uncaring Central sky- the homeless and the addicts, and the (_)_ people like her who have no other place. And then there are the old soldiers, for whom life is a war, and they love life.

His name is Giolio Comanche and he feels young again.

It was strange, just passing by and then seeing her in the cloak step forward as if she had been waiting all night for him. At first, he didn't know what she was going to do- steal his money, because he certainly dresses as if he has a lot of it? Offer him a _certain _kind of services because who knows what else she'd be doing? Unsheathe her head from that cloak of hers like the Lady Death and use her right arm, bent against her side, like a scythe to reap him? Who knows. He's old, he's seen everything.

"An Ishvalan ghost appears before me," he says, and he's been ready to rise to this sort of occasion ever since he was dragged off the battlefield. Well, it looks like the same can be said of her. Comanche decides that he very well may have met his match with her and that definitely means he can win. "And that scar on your head…I heard you died in East City." She looks like death, herself, though so maybe that's why it doesn't surprise him that she's still alive. She doesn't seem to be a tricky expert at cheating death, but dangerous women, the ones like her, you hear that they bring death but you never hear about them being dead. She's a living ghost and one day she'll die, but we all die anyway so that doesn't mean much, and he knows she won't die so easily.

"_You_ would challenge me, knowing I'm the Silver Alchemist? How courageous!" he says, and means it. Because she cannot be that talented or efficient of an alchemist, but she is proving herself to be a better fighter and sometimes that outweighs all other factors. He also doesn't feel that the advantage he has counts as unfair as he enters battle with her (he thinks they make an odd pair, and old alchemist and an ageless woman). The leg her people's bastard soldiers took from him is starting to make its phantom appearance.

He's shocked for a slight moment- he's almost managed to cut her leg off, but he hasn't. He has the feeling she'd still keep going even if he had succeeded. "You are pretty good, but all you can do is _destroy_," he tells her (as if she doesn't already know what her use is), wondering if she's ever thought that herself. She's given up all she has already and there's nothing she wants to be handed anymore so this is her only refuge. "You're no match for those of us with the ability to create," (well…she _wasn't_). He's seen a lot. And he's seen enough. These types of encounters, he knows how they end, and he knows that when you deal with these types- (but she's not really a type, so that's where he goes wrong). He is walking away, and she deconstructs his leg and he doesn't quite realize what exactly is going on until she clasps his head and he's in the water below and he has no way of help or defense.

She stays to make sure he doesn't come back up. When she sees the red in the water start to fade away (we all die, and then we all die out), the damage vanishing forever, it unsettles her in a way she can't quite describe and she walks away.

_Xx_

"Who are they?" she asks Yoki. He ignores her question, but then again, he doesn't like paying attention to any of her questions, because most of the time, he doesn't like examining her reasoning for asking them in case she wonders about something that she's right about and if _she's_ right then who is _wrong_?

_They_ are a young girl in silk robes and a joyous expression that has no place in a place like this and contrasts almost completely with the nameless woman's blankly tense expression, and a small animal at her side. Neither of them seem to have any reason to be here, but then again, they have come to the people who have no place. "I'm May Chang. It's nice to meet you," says the girl, and (you obviously have no idea who I am, then). She must not. But if she knew, would she be afraid? They're not so different. "I came to repay Mr. Yoki, since he saved my life." Well, she thinks, at least he can do that much. This girl seems well intentioned, and she tells this girl, "you're not indebted anymore. But you can't be here."

(It's not that she doesn't want to see the girl in her presence, or that she sees her as an enemy. In fact, it's almost the opposite. This girl , sure, she's done well on her journey but this is Amestris and this girl can't be here, not on her own, and much less with someone like _her_. She knows what Amestris does to- no, she knows what this _world _does to the girls who have no home but the endless paths of searching, she knows that this world finds them and swallows them up one way or another and it isn't always the same but these _girls _one way or another they don't _fall_ they _sink_. She knows because once, when she was old enough to be among the new entrants into the Amestrian military academy, young enough for school, she was one of them, clinging to a rock to throw and a holy text during the war. Because she was one of them, she knows. She's seen the others like her who have nowhere to call home and nothing desirable to call theirs. Once they sink nobody expects them to come back up, nobody awaits the day when they become strong or rise above the water and break the ice above, they are perceived as having a tragic ending to tell stories about, cautionary and horrifying and monumental. The only way to avoid a life like hers is, it seems, to not even come near it, and yet she's still there, wondering when the final burden or blow will come and if she really cannot escape? Can she even hope to escape? She wouldn't think to, but she can see her end will come because of it, one way or another. She's great at escaping but never tries for _the _escape and yes there's a difference and yes I know you know what she means. And in this world, if you're going to be one of them, the not lost but trapped women, you never want to take others with you. Even if you have someone who can stay with you, because they could end up even worse than you- it doesn't take much to kill a little girl. May should have no business here. Vengeance is not something she wants to have be a part of her life. Being with someone like her could turn her into someone as directionless and anticipating the final disaster as she is. )

But this is Amestris, after all. And no matter what kind of an extraordinary young girl who can travel country through country with only a panda by your side you are, you're not going to be turned away in this country, not by her. "At least…you shouldn't," she says, wishing she could be better with other people, wishing this girl could have found different people to cross paths with, (wishing women like her didn't have to worry about _it _getting worse when that possibility is as horrible as it is slim, always compulsively analyzing and altering her own mental state, wishing she could somehow end this horrid train of thoughts until all that was left was a carrier of vengeance because that would be better, really, and she doesn't know if she can carry this role out to the best of her ability) and all the while she doesn't believe in wishes. She can tell the girl and her animal aren't going anywhere, because the only things she can control is death and herself.

May widens her eyes. "Those are symbols of purification…the knowledge of the earth's flow. Your tattoo, it controls the flow. In my country that's the foundation of the purification arts." (destruction is the only way to purify sometimes.)

"Are you Xingese?" she asks. That train of thought is back to run her over (stop just stop she's dead both of you). No, it isn't the girl's fault but (why is this so hard for you? Sure, you want to kill them, that's already been established). May says that she is.

"My sister met a Xingese trader once and became interested in your purification arts," she says in one breath, in one shallow breath that makes her feel detached from all parts of time, "this is her research." She tries to straighten her face out so as not to give away any sort of impression of any sort of information because let me tell you and she can as well, faces hold a lot when they don't notice.

"How is your sister now?" May asks, interested, whose sisters are far away, from clans who hate her, so she's never really had one anyway. Xiaomei is her only real family, unless you count the people of her clan who are as powerful as she is. Yes, she's a princess, but barely. So she wonders what it must be to have a sister, wonders if the woman's sister is as pieced together and solemn.

"Dead. A State Alchemist killed her," she answers, looking down at the ground and God only knows how much artistic purification she could do with it doesn't matter how much of herself she'd destroy if only she could get that final peace piece of vengeance (it's good that vengeance but it is an insatiable lover it is) and closure and bring her closer to the holy and away from the hellhole that she's throwing herself in every time she goes to sleep oh Creator she thinks in her wordless dreams make me pure make me pure like spilled blood before it hits the ground _she needs it_. She can feel her soul falling to dust and burying itself under rubble that's fallen long ago and she can feel today's deterioration all around and the arm destroys, but it never quite purifies. Maybe it could if it were to be used on herself, purity against impurity, vengeance against vengeance. Which, somehow it feels like she's doing it. She doesn't see the killing as wrong, but her existence is wrong, so wrong that she can't talk to a little girl without feeling it, she thinks. But she doesn't make any of that noticeable, out of a sort of responsibility for her she's feeling.

She decides she's going to think of her next designated target or a place to hide or what she's going to do about May but thinking about all that at once sets the train in motion again. She realizes she's on the ground, her back against a wall as if prepared for a firing squad. She doesn't care.

_Xx_

She can tell they're expecting her. But then again, they always are anyway. They expect her, their scourge, to finally snap her claws and jaws over them for one last attack. And she expects death, but the loss of whatever left of a soul and self she has.

But it's just fighting and it's always something different because a battle means different things to everyone. But she's done it so many times before- you use your arm and run and curse and explain and bleed and think what if I died right here right now would I notice and where would I go, really? The physical motions are the same.

Edwina Elric is still alive and appears well (appears, funny word, right? Scar appears and then vanishes, and is never truly gone). She's bleeding on her face, rivulets like war paint over her eyes and into her mouth and curve of jaw and she notices the tattoo on Scar's arm- ink black on washed out brown. Could she really have killed Winston's parents? She thinks, and believes so. She's not that type of sinking girl, but knows enough from living in this world knows enough that chains of hate are wound tightly like roots and she may have one of her own.

But she doesn't know that chains can be shared. Or rather, chains of hatred share their people.


	10. Death

**The order of this is kind of off…I looked at the scene and then I rewrote it, but I wasn't looking at it while I wrote it.**

**I'm rather growing partial to writing male Winry.**

_Symbol of movement and steady advance. A figure which reaps with a scythe...death taken in its current meaning. The end of something._**  
**

It never ends. She can sense it, it will never end, right here and right now she _knows _– vengeance is a path but never a destination, and she has no clear destination otherwise, and what she has is all she'll ever really have. It's not that she's stuck. But somehow, she's trapped a bit more than she'd like to be. Worse off than how she started. Not because of her ways of vengeance- if she didn't think she had a reason to do it, she wouldn't be doing it. But it feels like there are all these different voices cajoling softly (kill the Fuhrer and not his pawns, stop killing, kill _yourself_) that are trying to persuade her and she just doesn't know if she can go on with her mind in this state anymore, but she knows she must.

None of those paths will bring her peace right now, and she's not looking for peace because it's not about her anymore. Look, sister, I know how it is with these lives, they expect us to go mad living them and so we do, we spend every moment in fear that we've already been taken over by some obstructive, invasive force- until one by one, we all go under. Vengeance, it's a falsely glamorous word, you imagine it as a jewel of the deepest blood red (war and desire), each of its facets glinting and reflecting a different scene of intriguing retribution, something you can show when you like and you always like to. And maybe that's how it is for some. She's tried, really tried, to get that _feeling _out of it, she tries to feel as if her life depends on it, when it's her hand and their foreheads and she takes a breath before the refuse to pray like they all do and will it feel different this time? She closes her eyes and the sudden feeling of a person collapsing all around her and the warm, impersonal rush around her fingers. Sometimes, for a second, she feels a sort of escape, not enjoying it, but a sort of feeling at one with her enemy; like a serpent devouring its tail, shredding it to strips and scales, throat raw with its own confusion. She doesn't regret it, but vengeance isn't what it claims to be.

They're asking her why. _Why _she destroys. And she has to tell them because they don't know by now and if they don't then they don't know who she is. Well, they never will, but they must understand her world if they're going to condemn it. "The girl in East City? Didn't you see what she'd been made into? She wasn't human anymore and nobody would ever see her that way again. The two sisters don't look at her, or at each other, they just look away. Because looking at her would mean seeing a reflection of their reactions and fears and realizations and sometimes you can't just pick up, rebuild and move forwards as if it's possible to completely fix a problem to the point where it stays in the past (nothing does. The past lives all over, and it becomes the future once again when it's forgotten, and that seems to happen quite a lot, people hide away the pain where they can't see it and pretend that's them moving on.)

"You still destroy! You cause pain and it's not going to solve anything!" Edwina says (_I am not trying to solve anything_ but that's not of use to say and it would just complicate matters, as anything that comes from her does. Her life is complication enough and she settles for saying only what she must.)

"I heard that just the other day," she says. If you're really paying attention (Alice, having only two senses, can hear this better than others, better than she's usually given credit for), her voice does not change tone or weaken, but it is quiet as if she's telling an important secret (sister holds the secrets) that is locked inside her and she does not quite know how to go about setting it out. "There are those like you who create," she says, (Edwina and Alice create, she and they know, and they even know in their worst hours. But when none of your hours call for hope, you can't go around creating unless you want to get burned.), "and there are those who destroy."

She knows who she is. Her life is a long time gone and when there's nothing left to rebuild, you destroy. Yes, it causes more destruction and revenge makes more revenge and fire with fire _and she knows that_ why _wouldn't _she know that, know that better than anyone? They're reasoning now, trying to understand her, trying to see where their reasoning begins and then just turns to ashes in her. But she's right. Whenever she's right, she wishes she didn't have to be. And she speaks the only truth she deserves to know (some way or another, we all end up with at least something that we deserve) with her back to the girls who will never quite know what she means because sometimes you hear people's eyes when they look at you, all squinting with tears and hate as if they know they'll never be like you, and you have no words to give them then. She's learned that much about emotions- yes, they'll be there, but you have to _put_ them out of the way before they _get_ in the way and she does what she has to do now, not what she wants to do.

"But still you would take the lives of innocent doctors who just wanted to help you!" Edwina yells. Alice seems to freeze in her place (but Scar's frozen and has been ever since the name) as she sees a boy quickly moving his way through the gathering crowd. (Winston Rockbell. He shouldn't be here, but he knows when it doesn't matter when he forgets what he should and shouldn't do in other people's eyes- what about his own eyes?- and he does what he thinks he should do for himself because he's just one of those people who think about others so much that they don't expect him to think about what that means to him). They're the only ones she's ever regretted, those doctors (but then again if you live with no regrets, you're probably the type who should), she won't make any kind of defense. They could come from their graves, from the past, from heaven like angels of punishment giving her a real finishing and she wouldn't object to any of it. Death met her a long time ago.

And for a moment time itself seems totally suspended on a fraying thread because Edwina is mad enough to kill and Alice is just waiting (she's _the little sister_, and that's better than just being an inhuman pile of metal, she supposes), and Winston's got a gun like he wants the whole world to taste his bullet and maybe he'll save some for himself. It's pointed right at her. Winston's keeping only as calm as he feels necessary because this isn't about keeping up a front anymore for his friends it's _confrontation _and this is real. He's not going to pretend he isn't grinding his teeth or that his eyes don't feel like they're being twisted out of his sockets (_take it like a man, Winston _well to _hell _with that he's been _taking it _better than anyone's ever given him credit for and nobody's ever seemed to notice since he was a child and first expected to _be strong _and what does that phrase even mean anymore?) But he'd never say any of this. He says a lot, a lot that people like and a lot that people hate, but he knows when it's going too far. And yet no matter how many lines get blurred, he's still in the same spot.

"Did you really do it?" he asks. Tentative and hesitating? Maybe. He almost doesn't want to know. He realizes that he's right and even if he wasn't his parents are _gone _and there's nothing he will ever be able to do to fix that. (Maybe that's why he fixes things. He likes being able to do it, make others feel better, help make them feel hopeful again. But some things aren't fixable. Some things never were.) He has a gun. He…wants to use it?

"I don't have any right to make excuses," she says. There's a gun pointed at her from a distance, it's staring at her like one eye boring into her face (between the eyes? In the mouth? Through the heart? To know how it would feel) She knows she has no right to say yes or no, or even to open her mouth at her own free will. And yet she still is. She _knows_ exactly _what_ she ism but sometimes she doesn't know why she does what she does. She almost feels cruel, but then realizes of course she would because that's exactly what she is. But if she had pretended to love tearing apart this boy's parents, that would be expected, she'd play her part and they'd play theirs and everything would resolve itself. No. These happenings carry on, and telling of that, that's a crueler truth than any lie she could toss out.

And he's yelling "how _could you!_ Why did you do it! _You killed my parents_! Why aren't you even denying it!" he barely notices that even though he's still pointing the gun, (sleep with one eye open) he's fallen to his knees and his head is clamped between his shoulders like it's trying to find refuge. But you can't hide, but you'll never run fast enough, or maybe you'll run so fast you'll pass right by your only chance. He realizes that now you can't fix what is broken, but maybe you can get rid of whatever's left. (is he broken? No. But his family is. People can be fixed, but broken families stay that way, and he has no way of fixing that so tell me what does he have to lose.)

"Give them back!" and she can't. Some people's hands burn or protect or deconstruct or transform or take or give or help others. Hers were made to destroy because that is her place and she has no right to move out of that place. It's a place she has no right being, but in this world she doesn't belong anywhere else. She loves heaven, but hell lusts for her. Her refuge, her prison. She can't give them back more than she can give back the arm-

She could never have made these things happen but yet she still did. They are the only ones she'll ever regret, even if she dies fighting herself. She almost wants to give them back, not for her own peace (the only peace she can give herself is the imagined clang of bullet in her ribs right now) but even though this is a young Amestrian boy she knows what it is to have a family broken beyond repair (but she knows what it is to deserve it). "You have every right to pull that trigger, but the moment you do, I will consider you an enemy," she says and she is _not_ letting anyone look beyond her surface because they don't need to. She knows how it sounds. She doesn't care. There isn't much she cares about anymore, that, she thinks, is the reason why she's considered dangerous.

Winston doesn't fire the gun. He doesn't kill (why aren't you don't you realize I just told you that you could don't you want to) her (well isn't this just your luck there are times you're being spared by someone who deserves your mercy you disgusting sick woman you _wanted _hell, she thinks). He can't do it and why? (He's only used to what you can change.)

"Don't do it!" Edwina shouts and kneels to Winston, putting her arm around him like a barrier, a shelter from this world. He doesn't move much, but his arms have moved down and the gun is on the dirt and what can he do now? Edwina looks up. She slants her other arm and moves her body (even though she's smaller, she's stronger) in front of him and looks up like _make _one _move_.

And she doesn't.

Edwina's protecting this boy from her O Creator Oh God Oh God is this what I am now but she already knows what she is and her ability is this task and she knows _now _what she's made of whether if it was by someone else or herself or both . (A soldier dressed in a black cloak beckons to her, tracing her bones with cold fingertips, down her face and throat) and she is thrown high and low with this rush of visions past present future what's the difference anyway, in her head. Tattooed hands reach out for a kill, to _feel,_ but whose are they? She doesn't know anymore. Whose eyes are widened as if they're being forced open? She can't tell. (who is the predator? She is) No, she is not shunted back and forth by this, not falling through uncertainty or drowning in loss because she knows now, knows what she is and who she is and where she's trapped herself (Oh God Oh God where am I) and in this world you better know that differences are only in name and when she opens her eyes she's still in the same place and her life is a long time gone and she can't be here anymore.

They don't follow her as she falls away from the scene, destruction leaving rebuilding.

_Xx_

So this is where she is now. But she couldn't have done it alone and now if she's going to be the cruelest fire to ever burn itself out she's going to do much more than that. (just- just clear my head now) She's leaving but this time, she's going back to the past and let it think whether or not it was such a good idea to make her. Because that's what it did to her (you like this don't you) and no, she doesn't like it, but she's enduring. She endures, this life, endures herself. She doesn't care. She was made to endure anything. This is the most her limits have been tested since that first day and now she's going to keep going because she doesn't think those limits could possibly be pushed any more.


	11. The Emperor

**I just wanted to clear something up before it got confusing- there's not going to be any AlicexMay (I've just always thought May seemed/looked to be about 10 years old and I just personally think that's a bit too young, maybe I'm old fashioned but meh.)**

**Writing fight scenes…I like reading them better XD**

**I've been rather busy lately and that's what took so long. **

_The Division of the Circle...transient wealth and power._**  
**

"I still believe in alchemy's potential. I want to believe in it," Alice says, having followed Scar to continue the battle. She's wasting her time on me, Scar thinks, I can't restore her body and in fact I'll only damage it so that will just obstruct her plans. But she knows that when you _want _to believe anything, you ignore everything that can disprove it, no matter how unsightly or unforgivable or all-encompassing it is. Because when you want to believe _that _badly, need it so badly, you usually have every reason not to. She understands.

Not because of her faith. She has no hope because there is no state of mind or life she can think of that she wants, but she has faith. She's heard that the two exist as an inseparable pair, that life without hope is a life without faith (and there could be some truth there) but then again, she's heard a lot. She has many beliefs, all of them every day are brutally challenged or cruelly strengthened. She's learned that believing what you see or hear or want is easier than it can sound, but comes at deadly costs. High prices, but she's not afraid to spend. Well, when you're spent, it comes naturally.

The ground seems to shift as a high voice calls out manically, "I found her! The Ishvalan I didn't eat!" (she's torn between thinking _again? You just picked the worst time _and _finally I can get away from this girl_, so she settles on her usual- _what is going on_). This familiar large man, his tongue racing back and forth, lunges for her, but she pushes him off (for his size, he doesn't seem to be much against her when it comes to hand-to-hand-combat. But then again, Gluttony the Homunculus has never been and never will be the one to prevail.) As she walks away from the side of a building, someone jumps from the roof to attack him. She moves closer to examine, but a strangely familiar young man wearing glasses riding in a passing car raises a pistol. The bullet seems to fly on its own accord to her leg the way it travels so swift and direct (she realizes where she's seen him- after that chimera girl.)

The homunculus, the stranger, and the sisters continue fighting and she wonders why Alice and Edwina have not followed her immediately after noticing her injury. But a few moments later, order is restored. Even with the lead in her leg, though, she won't back down. "For the murder of the Rockbells, it is time to face your punishment!" Alice says (_why didn't you just do this back there and I know you mean well but really?_), she gets next to her sister and both clasp their hands together (whatever happens, I'll get by, I have to, I always do).

But before the sisters can get any closer, a small figure attacks Alice from the side. May Chang. (She isn't sure whether to be shocked, thankful, or bothered, so she settles on being even more confused than before). "Miss Scar! Are you okay?" she shouts, her strange animal mimicking her threatening pose. "You tiny little woman!" May yells to Edwina (Scar really has to appreciate the irony of May calling_ anyone_ tiny) "What are you doing to the person who saved my life!" As the surrounding soldiers try to make sense out of where May came from, who she is, and what her connection to the nation's most wanted criminal is, the girl runs to Scar and neither of them are visible after May plants her hands on the ground. Dust and dirt cloud everyone's vision, and she coughs sand out of her mouth and realizes she hasn't done that since the war.

_Xx_

Her back is against the wall and her legs are parallel to the ground, but there isn't a wound- or a _hole_, as May had told her, since the sharpshooter's bullet had been so on target and efficient (Yoki saves May, May saves me, I don't save anything). Will hatred give life to more hatred? Of course it does. Until someone plays the angel and decides that forgiving and forgetting makes us all better. If you forgive, let me tell you, you are not forgetting but you're definitely pushing that truth away in the back of your mind where you won't notice it until it's too late. The only way to forgive is completely forgetting, deconstructing memories until they are almost obliterated except for some few shards- did you do that to me? Really? You couldn't have. She knows what her eyes looked like once-long ago, she _was_ Winston Rockbell. And now, she's not sure anymore.

"Did you say something?" asks Yoki, probably taking in the first available chance to cut off May's stream of alchemical mysticism. She realizes that whatever she was thinking, she must have said out loud. The subconscious is a strange being, in league with fate and truth. She decides to pretend she said nothing. She's a good liar because she's good at escaping.

_Xx_

Circumstances don't want to make you stronger. They want to break you until you can't remember having the will to get back up and keep going even though you have every reason not to. So, by now, hell and her both know that fear and hate should have torn her limb from limb. But that damage is already done, now, isn't it?

So, in a way, she really has become immune. Otherwise, here under the city, her arm radiating violently with unexplainable sensation, she would not be able to look at the spirit-like old man the way she is. He wears the clothes of someone from centuries ago, and stands far off near two of the homunculi, but he does not look the same as they do- he stands separate from them as if to indicate possession, his stance elegant and still as if he is a living statue, watching battles and coronations, not stopping a single vicious attack to appear in front of him. Just observing above, never coming down, like some sort of distant planet, controlling the way we all revolve.

"I don't like him," May whispers and buries her face in Scar's coat, "he's human, but he's not human!" And she looks out of the corner of her eyes so as not to draw any more attention (she realizes she'll have to end up fighting them one way or another, but would rather postpone it. She avoids unnecessary conflict, but so much of it is unavoidable.) "You're right," is all she answers with- she's an adult, that's how May sees her, and she needs to be at least partially responsible for her. Even though she can barely take care of herself sometimes, but some people are just like that, and she happens to be one. She knows she might be in over her head, but that's her life- looking at her limits and realizing she has no other choice but to push them. "None of them are."

The tension thankfully is broken with May's cry of "Xiaomei! I was so worried about you!", tearfully embracing the animal, who looks equally moved. This catches the attention of the strange non-humans, but she doesn't mind much. It's only when she sees one young boy clapping sarcastically when she notices Edwina and Alice. "Fullmetal!"

She doesn't quite know how long May, Edwina, the man and everyone else have been tearing the underground apart (like the war, like home), but she's still in the same place (never moving really) , thinking. She hears May saying something along the lines of "I expected you to look more like a princess" and she sees a massive creature with faces all over its horse-like body. It looks like a beast from hell, worse than any alchemically created hybrid, worse than any of Ishval's legendary creatures. Because sinful creations are known enemies and legends are accepted as impossible. Legends, in many ways, are worse than proven facts, a fate that should be impossible but toys with that word because it _can_, because there's always the slight possibility that it will happen, and if it does it will happen to you. The creature, from its mouth like an abandoned cave, growls "how can you use alchemy here!" to the sisters, but it looks_ right at her._ May holds up one of her blades.

She looks up at it, her eyes at unrest on its mouth. Inside it, there seem to be eyes.

Edwina turns, pointing a rigid-with-conviction index finger in her direction. "Look, Scar, I'm going to have to say this to you- the truth about the war that killed almost all of your people!" (Defensively, she forces her face so that it makes no movement, not to give anyone, whether they are here or not, the satisfaction of seeing her break because she's already broken and broken women only fare worse from advertising what they are.) "The one who fired the first shot is right there!" her finger aims in the creature's direction.

It takes her a moment to realize she isn't breathing. This is the truth, is it? What is? She doesn't pay any mind to Edwina's "these bastards started it!" because she doesn't have time for Edwina right now and it just isn't this girl's battle to fight. This is between her and the war and she doesn't care who started it because as long as she's alive it's still going on. She's not doing much damage, not that she can notice, her eyes are closed and if she dies here her journey will not be complete, but if she dies right here and right now she won't notice, maybe she won't even notice as hell's flames take her.

When the strange man comes to her, she places her hand to his forehead- but she cannot harm him and realizes he could have completely disintegrated her with his own immunity and power. Alchemy, she decides, really is no field for her.

_Xx_

Alice helps May escape through a tunnel underneath, picking her up like a small parcel in her wide armor, and nearly drops the girl when she notices Scar behind her. "You'll take May and exit safely with her, right?" she says after a moment to her enemy, and Scar can tell she doesn't quite trust her even with a child. Which, well, she doesn't like that, but there are more important matters at hand.

"But…I killed that boy's parents," she says in an expressionless deadpan, not quite knowing whether Alice is testing her or not, because people aren't like this to her, so how is she supposed to know? "Don't you want to reciprocate?"

Alice turns, her helmet facing down and her soft voice cold. "I'd love to hurt you," she says, "but I'd rather save May's life right now, okay? I really don't want to ask someone like you for help, but obviously May trusts you…" She knows exactly what she is, not only because of her own judgment, but because of everyone else's evaluations.

"What are you going to do know?" she asks, not caring whether or not it sounds like she's trying to drastically change the subject.

"We can't transmute here, neither me nor my sister. But whoever these people are, they want to keep us alive. They fight us but they won't kill us, I thought at first they were going easy on us, but now I'm not so sure." She really doesn't know what she can say to this, so she just does what she does best- ignoring the calls.

"I really would help May, but I'm barely able to walk right now on my own, unfortunately. And I'm not going to the surface." It might sound like she's going on some crazed suicide mission from her last sentence, she realizes, but then again, she has been for years. She puts her hand to the side of the tunnel underground as she notices _it _with that large man, sending particles of water exploding all over the area- she can distantly hear Alice shriek "that was so reckless, Scar!" (well, what else do you expect from me by now?)

And she's somewhere, she doesn't really know, in the tunnels underground Central. Under hell, her new territory, the sort of place someone like her can call home. It feels like she might break too many bones, but at least she's getting somewhere. Well, only physically, she's still in the same place as before.

She has no idea what exactly has just gone on, really- she knows what started the war, but not why, not who these people are, not what the Elrics have to do with anything, not what she has to do with all of this. Well, for now, she just focuses on moving forward, stability and power in the only way she knows how to find it.


	12. The Magician

**This chapter is…really long, I know, but I think all that's in here wouldn't have worked separated XD**

_The destiny of man struggling with the undercurrents of the occult...hesitation, guile, uncertainty, change caused by chance._**  
**

The water, warm like some kind of molten jewel, slides all over Rizen's body, over his face and closed eyelids, down his strong shoulders and on his back. Usually he hates having his back uncovered, which had given him a reputation in military training for being straitlaced. As far as he's concerned, that isn't such a bad reputation. He holds the secrets, so it's his responsibility to keep them that way. But when he hears his dog's shrill call outside the door, he twists the dial on the shower, molten warm gold to frigid silver elixir to nothing but leftover steam. There must be a visitor- he doesn't get many of those (but he figures the Colonel is right, in this profession you can die at any given moment so he plans accordingly).

Stepping carefully out of the shower, he reflexively reaches for the first towel he can get his hands on and puts it over his shoulders. He watches his back if you know what I mean, but if you were behind him, you'd see how he was covered in jagged whirls like living ink creatures carving their way across him like cracks in ice, and over that there are raw pink burns that look clean and new. But in a few moments, he's moved, and the towel all but covers _it_.

He hears hollow, rapid banging- knocks at the door. "Lieutenant! It's me, Edwina!" _well, I really hope there isn't a problem, _he thinks, and he subconsciously wonders what's going on- live as a spy, think like a spy. He puts on his clothes and doesn't turn to face the mirror until he has his shirt on. You never know what to expect with Edwina. "I'll be just a second," he says, adjusting his shirt, watching his reflection do the opposite.

_Xx_

She's been in the tunnels for- well, she doesn't count, she's got all the time in the world. Her feet clang against the metal pipes, and her legs slide against grates, and she realizes she may have made a mistake when she hears a tired sounding voice call "is someone there?" She keeps her breath inside for a moment, weighing her options- if she ran, the person might notify the authorities, if she spoke, this person is probably an enemy. But she's been in danger before, she knows those places, and she figures she hasn't got anything to lose by replying "are you a civilian?" stern, but quiet enough to hide her accent because wouldn't that just be a dead giveaway, quiet enough so that it's barely noticeable that there's a woman talking because that always changes matters. Not even a voice, a vessel.

"Are you from the outside? How did you get here?" the voice asks a bit louder, but she can tell this person is trying not to be heard by anyone else. Sometimes, making yourself heard is a mistake.

She puts her head closer to the vent. "First, who are you? Why are you down here?" this will only get stranger. Keep your head, keep your life, and you'll have the upper hand if you stand apart. She feels something thick and wet slip down her forehead , and sees a small droplet of black-red blood (intensity and the unknown, desire and war) plunge below.

"Are you injured?" after she doesn't answer- what can she say, though?- "I'm a doctor. You can come down. Don't worry if you're in trouble." (years ago, those words would have made her into someone she could have been, but now she can't be. She isn't someone to save.) She breaks the vent and jumps downwards. "An Ishvalan!" observes the woman standing in a barren, suspicious looking room. Well, she thinks, if I could have thrown in a bigger shock I didn't. She stares distrustfully at the older woman, who seizes the phrase that is right out there for anyone to take, she always knows it's there- "you're Scar, the woman who kills State Alchemists!"

This doesn't make her angry as if she's being accused or afraid as if she's being threatened or sad as if she'd like to get out of not being anything else. It gives her, this sentence of recognition, a calm, constant feeling. They call her Scar. They call her a lot of names and titles and insults, but they all agree she's Scar and that's her self. "That's what they say," yes or no does no good. Equilibrium. The doctor puts her head in her hands, and she laughs shallowly and anxiously. "Are you being forced to stay here?" she asks the doctor, knowing that in a place like this the answer is most likely yes, but most likely, she knows, is not always how things go. The doctor looks like she's trying to piece memories together. "They made me work with them…and they're going to use me. Those things, the homunculi. They seem to know everything about the war," (her shoulders fall, not as if she's relaxing but as if she's lightheaded) "and I hate myself for giving in to them without a fight." She knows how that is- she wouldn't say it out loud, but she _knows_ what happened during the war and if the alchemist didn't get a fight then, well, she _will_. And, of course, she hates herself because she knows what she's doing, but that doesn't mean she can't hate others. If hate has rules, she's broken them, along with everything else she's touched. "Then put up a fight now," she says, knowing that not everyone will have the same reactions as she does because what kind of a world would that be but she's always been the kind to have the wrong reaction. "I'll help you. Tell the public," she'd have to work before they'd believe her, but she's used to working.

The doctor shakes her head. "I can't. There's a whole village being held hostage. I took on a fake name and they told me if I ran or even killed myself, everyone there would get killed. And they would." She doesn't look past the floor, as if it's the first time she's said it out loud.

"Well, almost all of my people are dead, so I can't feel pity," she replies. Pity isn't the same as sympathy or empathy, but she can't feel any of those. Those emotions are not allotted to her- pity is from the self-serving, sympathy is from those who do not understand, and empathy is from those who understand through experience. She cannot feel.

"I know," the doctor says, "that's why I want you to kill me."

She cocks her head. She's not solving the mystery of Amestris, but Amestris seems to want to solve her. "My real name is Tina Marcoh. I don't look so powerful, but I am the alchemist who created the Philosopher's Stone that destroyed your people. I'm your enemy. But if you kill me, the villagers will be safe. It was luck, finding you here." (some thing about these words insult her, even though she doesn't have pride that can be insulted.) "Scar, please kill me. I will atone in death." Atone in death? What a phrase. Marcoh thinks she means it, but Scar understands atonement, because she'll never have it- as much as she likes to think she'll go to Ishvala, well, if you don't atone in life (which she has no plans of) you know what happens in death. You go to a world where the sun burns itself to ashes. She grips Marcoh's face in her hands and shoves her down to the ground, teeth clenched so tight her voice is remarkably quiet and her eyes are violent slits and her hand is to her heart. "Tell me. I still don't know everything about the war. Tell me what you were really doing there before my arm destroys you!"

_Xx_

"So the stone used to kill my people was made from their lives," she repeats like a drone. "How _could you! _You made my people kill each other! I won't let you die so easily!" she's holding Marcoh by the collar, lifting her off the ground, but after a few moments she tosses her down.

Marcoh's "I'll do anything to atone for my sins" goes unheard as Scar slams her fist to the concrete wall. She can feel the emerging of hot blood-she's beginning to feel a dull, calm sensation whenever she bleeds now. She sinks to the ground, kneeling with her face to the wall. I'll do anything to atone for my sins? Well, you can't. They're so sinful because there is no "anything" that can ever make up for _you._

"Marcoh," she says as evenly as she can, like the sea's churning after a hurricane. "I need you to tell me about the alchemist called Kimblee." She doesn't see, but Marcoh nods, not quite understanding. "And when I read my sister's notes, she said something I couldn't quite make out. Before she died-" she can say it, when you bring death, when you are death, the word loses its thrill- "she told me, 'there is something strange about this country's alchemy.' You're a skilled alchemist," she says (from her, this is either an insult or admitting helplessness) "does it mean anything to you?"

Marcoh says, "I…can try," not knowing what Scar is looking for exactly, but knowing it's best for them both if she doesn't ask.

Scar inhales. "I'm breaking you out now." Marcoh's protests are useless, and Scar says, "If I _kill _you, there won't be any problem." She blankly stares at the strange Ishvalan woman.

"You'll have to leave your clothes here, I know how that sounds. We're going to be far, far away," she says.

_Xx_

Well, Kimblee thinks, it's about time. She won't complain about the disease-ridden prison or the vile inmates; she won't complain about how if they need her so much then why did it take this long to get her? She won't complain because she takes it as it comes-too powerful to be a victim, too sensible to be too much more than an observer. She knows the best place to be even if she can't always get there.

"I've got to thank you and your people," she drawls from the back of the car. She can see the sun of the late afternoon, a deep red. Envy can appreciate her brand of false formality. She and Envy (whatever it or he or she is, she doesn't know, they're all somewhat the same, those homunculi) don't mind each other. Not at all.

"Yeah," Envy says, "we got work for you." The way Envy says 'we' reminds her of servitude, even though she is serving them. "You do?" she leans forward. Work is fine, she chooses her work, so she always makes sure to enjoy it.

"You must remember Doctor Marcoh," Envy says.

"I know her well," Kimblee replies. Marcoh is one of those people she finds both useful and uncooperative- the type she hates, but has fun with.

"She escaped, we think," Envy says in a sort of gentle agitation, like he's mulling over a decision he won't get to make.

"You…think?" Kimblee says. She expects better from the people she owes gratitude to, but then again, she should have known what to expect when Bradley didn't let her out. But she always goes back. Don't ask her to explain why. Even though she'd have to agree that it's a valid question.

"We're not sure," Envy says in a tone that means 'stop asking questions' because they're in a nice conversation but only on the surface. "But she's probably with this Ishvalan"-Envy says the word as if he's telling a joke- "who's been killing State Alchemists, some woman we call Scar. Crazy lady. And you thought you had your share of those in prison, right?" (Envy's always needed a sense of humor.) "Well, she's _really _getting in our way. So bothersome."

That's a bit redundant, Kimblee thinks, everything that gets in your way is bothersome. But she doesn't speak. "You're the Crimson Lotus Alchemist, queen of the Ishvalan Massacre. And you missed one," Envy says. He's not trying to criticize, even though that's what he always ends up doing- humans are below them, they waste what they have. Kimblee can tell what Envy's trying to say.

"You're right. It's gone incomplete," she says. Closure has always been a priority. It should be. When you don't tie up loose ends, you get tied up in them. "I take it that I'm being assigned to kill her?" shouldn't be difficult, really, she's not sure how an _Ishvalan _could get past the traps for all this time. And then there's the obvious.

"Kill her on sight," Envy says as if he's said it before (he has. Countless humans, men and women, old and young, they all look the same after a while). "And Marcoh- we want her alive." Envy stresses the last word flatly. He tosses back a metallic case. "All the money you'll need is in here." There's something else, she knows it. There always is.

"You didn't just let me out for that, did you," she says and makes herself sound casual. Well, she's not. She's got dirt in her throat and her hair's pulled back so tight she can feel how her scalp has moved and there's a Stone inside her and her nails slip over her cold, damp palms, digging in.

"Marcoh needs to be taken care of," Envy says in anticipation of her reaction.

"You're so cruel, Envy," she says, mockingly dramatic. Envy is cruel and she doesn't quite trust him. But she doesn't mind him. She snakes her finger down her throat, racking up her Stone and covering her mouth to mask the violent cough that comes afterwards. "It's been a while…" Envy reaches back, bearing a new, cleaner looking Stone. "This is made from her old assistants," Envy says.

"Her old friends?" she laughs, not really caring one way or the other. Her eyes are getting used to the light fading.

"Oh _you're_ cruel," he tells her like some sort of game between two people who are very close. (You're cruel; no, _you are_. You're _gorgeous_; _no,_ you are. You're less bound by humanity- I wish you were right.) She's cruel, yes, but they love it. He isn't sure of her reliability, she doesn't strike him as a traitor, but this isn't about loyalty. It's about ability. His Father didn't make seven of them to have companions and they don't look for human associates to have friends, never mind that thought, never mind all of Envy's thoughts as always.

"Oh, I know I am. How else do you live?" What would you say to her? She says a lot. Don't we all?

Envy doesn't respond immediately, neither of them ever do. "You're really gonna show her, aren't you? You hate when people screw with you." It's something he can understand.

"It's in my plans," she says, exaggerating a wistful tone. Talking. That's all it is. She suppresses the feeling of being pulled around by some sort of cough- coughing up stones and words and blood and scorpions in some desert hell where the sun and moon rain pieces to the ground. Prison, they say, gives you time to think- but she's always had time to think. "I want to know what will happen when everything's been planned."

Envy screech-stops the car at the train station. It's dark out, the silver moon has been up for long enough to acquaint itself with the sky. Don't make a scene, Kimblee considers saying to seem casual. "Wouldn't it look like something if I just opened the door for you like out of some movie," Envy says. They like acting, Envy and Kimblee- grandeur and illusion, finery and deception.

Ad Envy opens the door, Kimblee feigns a breathy "_thank _you" as if they're not in league with each other, as if he's a normal human and she's the kind of person that has tangible ends. "Enjoy your trip, miss," Envy says in the fake soldier's body, relishing each syllable. He leans into her. "You won't mind if I tell you, Marcoh and Scar may not expect us send your best regards."

"Not at all," she hisses, cruel and not casual, finding a scene to enjoy.

_Xx_

In the calm-from-the-outside apartment, late at night, Rizen says, "and that's all I know about the war."


	13. Strength

**Yet another busy week. I feel like Briggs!Sloth XD**

**So…when did Scar hide the notes? (rereading scenes gives you maaany questions.)**

_The Mind can always dominate matter...if you have willpower, events will be overcome. When right is on your side, the situation will be mastered._**  
**

Somewhere in Amestris where you wouldn't think to look, there's a State Alchemist. I know how this sounds. We all have our jobs to do, true, but hers is different, that's what she tells herself, that's what she knows. She carries it out like she has an obligation hidden somewhere. It's that obligation that keeps her here in the nation of power and falsehoods. Oh, she knows falsehoods all right, you just will never know how much. The truth is that they're all around, and sometimes they may as well be the truth, and that won't change soon. She'd like to take them away and put them where all the forgotten stories go; well, she'd like to get rid of them, but it doesn't work like that. When you vanish, you usually end up somewhere.

She looks out the window of her nearly empty train car, her back to the two women near her. One of them, a soldier, looks at the ground; the other, a medic, seems to be looking at her hands entwined with each other.

_Xx_

She's used to making plans. They don't always come out the way they're supposed to, but she's used to thinking about what _mustneedstohasto _happen. Because she can tell, a new plan needs to come now. She knows where she's going and what she's doing and that it will bring her unknown consequences. She could die, she could solve alchemical mysteries of the past, she could get on the wrong train and end up in Drachma. As of now it's up in the air and she's still in the same place. It shouldn't be a big deal, leaving one city for another. That's not what it's about. If it was, she wouldn't be here. Her life is this, coming and going and making an impression and then just leaving it all behind. She comes back at times, but she never stays because she has no place. And, like all people without places, she is in a sort of caged freedom, like a gutter (come in on your own accord and come look around but just try and climb back out, and if you're here why are you even trying to?)

As much as she had felt the obligation and want, she's not going to kill Marcoh. If she was going to, she'd have done it already. She has never killed slowly. Using Marcoh as an accomplice would mean trust in some way (in some way or another, she cannot trust), even if she doesn't like her at all. She doesn't tell any of this to Marcoh, though. All of it is either obvious (words like jagged embedded lines written all over her like inerasable filth all over her like scars), or the sort of thing even she wouldn't bring herself to say out loud. So what she _does _say is, "it's fine," because what's terrible for Marcoh is what's fine for her, "you'll fit in here" in the Ishvalan slum she's at with May and Yoki as well.

Well, for now, at least. She knows she can't be here for long, and it all works out for the better, she supposes, that she won't be. You can't pin her down, Amestris, that's her own job. Some people may as well nail their soles to the ground with the way they keep their roots like chains, but she may as well nail her soul to the ground because her work doesn't require it (even if she does) and she doesn't know how much of it is still there (and she needs it, and she can't find it).

"Who is this?" May asks. (what are you so happy about? But there are more important questions. Are you jealous? She thinks to herself) She's standing beside Yoki, who looks like he's considering asking where she always goes all these days, but he's stopped asking, he stopped asking early enough, when he realized he didn't want to know. It would just be more trouble knowing. And there's a strange edge to her voice when she speaks of her life, not threatening, but the sort of voice someone who is coming apart uses, the sort nobody would ever want to be. He wouldn't know. (May, too, wonders where she goes, and decides whatever she does must be exciting, but at the same time terrible. That's how Scar's life strikes her, the sort of life you'd hear about in folkloric-like stories, she's seen it that way since the incident underground- she doesn't want a repeat of that, but is willing to go through with another if she can get what she needs.)

"Doctor Marcoh," says the voice coming from under the long, white cloak, covering all but some parts of her face. (nobody can see her, nobody can know why. She's used to hiding. Marcoh doesn't feel like this is hiding anymore though, just living quietly.)

"You were a doctor during the war!" May recognizes the name, but not the connotation that is aroused every time _the war _is mentioned. There are many kinds of scars.) She remembers Dr. Knox mentioning the name, but he had said a lot of names and left a lot of information out, to make himself forget.

When you can't forget, you'll settle for anything else.

"May, she wasn't a doctor," Scar begins. She has the feeling that she wouldn't do this if May weren't there. Well, someone has to tell her if she's going to be in on this, someone has to tell her the truth and someone has to understand her, once you're on this path you don't do it halfway- "she approved the slaughter of my people." May should understand what it is, to have your people used, she's not trying to manipulate May (she doesn't want anything from her) (and besides, she's not _that _cruel, is she?) She's forgotten how to be soft, but she doesn't need to go out of her way to give hardness to May. She hasn't had to look out for anyone since she failed to.

The silence isn't so tense. They're all used to tense silences (Marcoh in the empty room and in between Envy's cajoling instructions; Yoki after people ask where he's coming from; May in the court watching yet another member of her clan coming back from the emperor with the expected rejection; Scar, well, what you've heard of her is only the beginning and what you _will _hear of her is infinitely less than there is to hear, infinitely less than you should hear. Some silence should not be acknowledged.) You get used to it.

"Well," she continues, "we…have plans now. I'm looking for something very important." She needs them. And they need a place to be.

"Are we looking for the Philosopher's Stone?" May asks, the look on her face on the thin line between excitable misery and overjoyed hope. (I really hate to tell you this, she thinks, but sometimes we need to forget about listening to what makes us happy and hear what we need to.) May wouldn't benefit from the Stone. It may not be her business, but when the Stone is involved, it's the business of everyone who can die and then some. (there are seven of them.) Everyone who can live and die and get pulled into the side door disguised as a pleasure house but really is the secret-infected iridescent prison known as this world she _lives _and no, I don't mean _lives in_. She knows how it works. The Stone is the sort of trouble even she won't try and get herself into.

"No!" She says, a bit more forcefully than she knew she had left for her voice. "That Stone…" she directs her speech to May but doesn't look her in the eye because you never know what you'll find there. A sort of safe zone. She can hear how the animal has gone quiet. She must explain- that is her life. Must- need- have to. "It is not something you can want." She doesn't know if anyone here knows what it is to not be able to want something, but that doesn't matter now, she can feel the wreckage forming in her voice, shaking and crashing somewhere she can barely hear but she knows exactly what it's saying. These are the type of words that fly from your throat, catching on each other as they race, and maybe they'll hurt you a little but they don't mean to hurt you a lot- they're just doing their job.

She isn't trying to play a dangerous game with May's mind. That's not her kind of cruelty. It occurs to her- what_ kinds_ are hers, anyway? She looks at May's face as if to say I know what I'm telling you, I don't want you to be ruined by these secrets in this world (_not like I am_). But she doesn't say it out loud.

"Then why have you brought your enemy here like this, ma'am?" Yoki says. He always ends up changing the subject, trying to find a separate topic clean of tension even though he knows it doesn't stay that way for long. They have the sort of conversations nobody wants to hear. The talk of the lost and the missing and the desperate and the ones who know what they deserve. Among those, Yoki isn't sure where or if he fits, but he knows he has a job to do.

She doesn't look at May or the ground or the sky, in fact, she's barely even looking at Yoki's face. Her eyes seem to not notice him- they do, though, they're just unblinking and still like a machine's or a dead woman's. "Because I can use her," some vengeful spirit within her makes it known _I am still alive and always will be _and her arm swings to Marcoh's face. Vengeance doesn't just die down, you see. It can be selective, but it tries to keep its sanity, even if its hosts cannot. She knows vengeance. She may have been taken by it, but they're a team, a dysfunctional one, but they're hand in hand sisters in arms, arming-disarming. It's not something she'd ever explain. She's not wasteful but she doesn't try to explain herself. That always disturbs plans- she's not going to explain to Marcoh the devastation of an individual after the destruction of a group, that should be obvious. She's an enemy but has a mind of her own, even if she lets her will be controlled by others. She doesn't explain the obvious, or what nobody else can (should, you mean) understand.

The Amestrians, she realizes, might go easier on her if she puts on some kind of show for them. Show some emotion, explain some of the obvious that nobody else has said, like some kind of actor. But she doesn't want to do any of that. She's not giving the military what it wants (to see her break. She's done that already) in order to escape their punishments (she's tried). She can take it. She isn't gone yet. And if she isn't now, then what can make her?

Marcoh's guttural moans of pain barely register. She's heard those before, sharp white noise, howls that dully carve into her as if they're trying to get some kind of a reaction. It's not as if she's killing right now. What doesn't kill you- well, it may not make her stronger. Strength is the sort of creature you can't pin down as one type or another. Maybe what she's done is only pure filth, vengeance that she's just covering up with excuses. But she doesn't make excuses. "Now nobody will know who you are," she says quietly, and gives May the kind of apologetic look that means, I'm sorry you had to see that but it's just going to get worse, the kind you never want to see.

May and Yoki are completely taken aback, and Marcoh is on the ground, head down, hands compressed over her face. The smell of it fills the air, blood that streams a bit too fast and the burn of alchemical processes (she's worn it all over her before, time and time again and it's hard to get out). Yoki breaks the silence because everything ends up broken, because this is how he pretends for everyone but mostly for himself that there is normalcy. Well, not normalcy. Stability and something (vague, yes; bad, no) to be sure of that is not typical to _her _lifestyle (he doesn't hate her. But of course he resents her. Who couldn't?) "Where are we going exactly?"

She looks away because she always does. "You're coming with me," she tells Yoki _(because you need me, I suppose, better than May does. Because May needs to heal Marcoh and I can't have Marcoh around me and what I'm doing I don't want to involve May in.) _"May, you go with Marcoh." Marcoh doesn't say anything and May gives her a sympathetic look, as if by default-she gets used to seeing others like this, that she doesn't see.

She's scarred someone now. But it's not the same. Marcoh is still Marcoh, after all. "We need to go to where I hid my sister's research- up North."

_Xx_

Briggs is a place where you hear what you need to. Oliver Armstrong hears every voice, every intrusion, every word that won't yet be said- at least he aims to. His aim is great, he'll say. He has to, especially in these times. Yes, he's one paranoid bastard but at least he's not dead.

In this world, if you're not dead, that's either meaningless or it means you've got some kind of power inside you. But ask him, and he'll just say _survival of the fittest _because he says what's on his mind, but no more than that.


	14. The Hanged Man

**I like writing Oliver. He's really fun. Lol. **

**Now Yoki, Scar, and Kimblee can be a ~literal~ train-wreck…get it? (so punny :O )**

_That which is up is like that which is down...the abandonment of something, destruction, renunciation, uncertain projects...bound by fate, without free will._**  
**

May likes the cold. It is strange, and at first it gives her an unwelcome tingling feeling, but it has a welcoming quality to it, unwavering and thin. "Do you think Scar and Mr. Yoki are all right?" she asks Marcoh, wondering if Marcoh can battle if needed.

"I'm sure they are," says Marcoh, because Scar is going to keep being _all right _until she drops dead, and because Yoki is always going to get into trouble one way or another. She's old enough that she _knows _how people are, but in this world, she's realizing, you can't always predict what will happen to them. There's always more than tricks the eye.

May looks to her, and asks an innocent question (an innocent question with innocent intention-what a rarity. You can practically make a living off talk like that, and people do, sometimes when they need to. Sometimes they don't even mind.) "Are you all right?" May asks, and she's used to hearing _no_, because, in her clan, nobody needs to lie anymore. Marcoh nods yes, because it's not her right to burden the girl. "I wish I could have made you a nicer-looking face," she continues.

Marcoh forces a laugh for May's sake. "It's all right. I'm getting old, anyway." And she is-not just in age. You get old as the years go by, as your body develops and withers away, as you look in the calendar's superior eye and think what has gone right, as you look to yourself and think what you'll never be able to change and what you never have been able to control. "Look, May, the Briggs mountain range. They're the borderline between Drachma and Amestris. We're in the dead of the wilderness now. You have the map…are we near Scar's location?" That is, if Scar even is where she said she'd be. But she is. She's a lot of things, but she's reliable because she doesn't have any profit to make off of deceit. When she talks, she doesn't need to lie.

"Almost!" Says May, looking at the map, and picking up her head to scan the shadowlike evergreens around her. She points out an abandoned, falling-apart house- at least it used to be a house. (A last stop, a place people go to but don't want to look at, and never want to come back to because if you go to places like that more than once, you never leave.) The notes are in there. May thinks it was very clever of Scar to hide them there, such valuable notes in such a forbidding place (it's forbidding because it doesn't tell you to leave, but it wants you to come.)

It could be the book of despair or of hope. Knowing alchemy, it could be either, or both. Knowing Scar, one is more likely than the other.

_Xx_

Oliver stares them down. It's almost amusing, really, these two act like nothing intimidates them. At least, the blonde one does. The armored one seems like a much less guarded type. "I hear you're friendly with my younger brother. Tell me, is Alex well?" he asks.

"Yes," Alice answers in a forced, shallow tone.

"That's fine, then. You're Edwina and Alice Elric, right? I'd like you to tell me why you came to see me instead of going through Central Command. And why Alice's suit of armor is empty." He glares at Edwina, just to clear it up that he doesn't take nonsense from _any _of Central's pawns.

"We'd rather not say…" Edwina trails off, and Alice says that it's _nothing personal, Major General. _Well, he thinks, he could gather that much, even though most people don't clamor to tell him their deepest secrets (but he never tells. He has no reason to.) "Anyway, I really don't want to get into any trouble." She's, of course, ignoring the fact that failed transmutation isn't the only factor that would count against her. She's got so many schemes or ideals; it can be hard to keep track of them all. Edwina can be very selective at times. "We…attempted to bring back our mother with human transmutation," she tells him, staring as if to say 'what's your point?' in the non-rhetorical way.

"Oh," he says, because he's heard worse and if these two think they can startle him with some well-known misdeed that's happened hundreds of times before, then they have an infinite amount of other things coming their way. "And are you looking for the little girl with the cat? I see."

"You're going to help us?" Edwina turns to look at Alice with elated disbelief, the kind of joy that only appears in children or any other naïve type of person (Oliver's seen them all.)

"You are reckless and destroy all that's in your path for your own gains like selfish fools, and it surprises me that even Central would choose you as a representative…that's what I'd like to tell you," he says, knowing that is what he just did tell them, but it doesn't make any difference. Words, he's found, don't often have the desired effect. "I do, however, have an interest in purification arts. That girl…is she a friend of yours?"

"I guess," Alice says tentatively.

"I'm planning to use the purification arts. Briggs borders Drachma and war lurks around ever corner. There's no choice but to prepare for every possible disaster." They won't understand. People don't like his reasoning, but his methods work, and iron fists are better than severed heads.

"But purification arts are for healing…" Alice starts. "Why- how could you use it for war?" she asks, half-meaning _how could you bring yourself to do such a thing?_ as if he hasn't done worse, and half-meaning how he could possibly use alchemy as a non-alchemist. He'd find a way. He always has. And nobody questions him, because they fear him. That's for the better, he supposes. Weak, all of them.

"Don't start. You don't even know what you're talking about. Your life depends on the people who protect the border, and it's up to me to command that. The lives of Amestris depend on me." Is it a burden? He doesn't see it that way. It's a challenge, a way of life, a demanding demon always in the front of his mind, driving him every step of the way. "I will use _any _means necessary to do protect this border." Some say he's even colder, harsher, more intimidating, wields power more threateningly than the Fuhrer and damn if they're wrong, he thinks, he knows he's doing a better job. "You can never be _too _prepared. You need the _right_ hands and you need the _right_ technique. Alchemists say that one is one…_ I don't care. _Those laws need to be broken because our enemies have already done that." Edwina and Alice don't say anything. They don't agree with him, he can tell, but they don't have to. They'll learn. He doesn't care. "My soldiers and I will find the girl. You two stay in this fort. Major," he turns to the frowning woman next to him, "give these two some work."

Because, as he knows, life is _work, _task after strategy after attack, one after another, tenfold and sevenfold (and these things sometimes happen in three because the world _just doesn't care about you_) and if you can't keep up than it _will _kill you. He doesn't go by feeling or fate- he goes by what he needs to do before he knows what will happen, because he knows what the alternatives are.

_Xx_

(If I've got to listen to these ice-backwoods drones tell me one more obvious fact as if they know so much better than I do…) Kimblee barely pays attention to the Briggs soldiers talking. She had stopped taking them seriously once she had heard one of them say under his breath to the other that she was _the convicted one_ as if she wasn't the only one, as if he was in any place to be looking down on her. "There were sightings of a middle aged man with black hair," he says to her. "And no sighting of Marcoh."

She starts walking away before the soldier even notices her leaving. "This is my job," she tells herself. Of course, she doesn't tell any of them what she really thinks, that would just shatter her illusion. And she knows her good standing hangs by a thread and considering who she's dealing with considering who she's working with considering who she's placing complete dependency in- _never mind. I have it all under control like you rank-whores wouldn't ever begin to understand_.) She's a good actress, isn't she? It becomes necessary.

"Wait-" the soldier begins, trying to tell her how to conduct their or her or Scar's business, she doesn't know which one, but doesn't like the idea of any of them. She can't give him individual blame, they're all like this.

"Please don't interfere," she says in a salacious tone that suggests 'please' is her special word for 'if you value your life.' He can't see the look on her face and neither can she, but it's full of the thrill of the moment, high on the best, most dangerously intoxicating drug you can become addicted to.

_Xx_

She is outside near some confidential-looking train station that houses soldiers, weapons, and secrets. She doesn't look, not now, but she can tell the few Amestrians are looking _right at her _and she's never really liked being looked at. After all, who else, would be responded to by whispered calls of "there she is!"

"If you know what's good for you," she says under her breath because she's not going to let them make her afraid, she's not going to let them do any more than they already have. "Don't get involved. Stay far away. It's best if you stay hidden until I come get you," she tells Yoki as she helps him into the train car.

He doesn't watch as she walks away because he's too busy trying to evade the soldiers (they appeared to not want anything from him, but he's not so sure whether or not they don't want anything with him. There's a difference. Just ask Scar.) Maybe he's in over his head, but he has been before. It's another day with her. He doesn't like the fact that she livens things up and brings excitement. Others would see it as adventure, but he'll agree with her- it's not.

All this goes through his head as he tries to find a passable place in the train to hide when a courteous voice says "whatever you have to do with the Crystal Alchemist and Scar, I'd be _just so interested_ to hear it." He doesn't answer, whichever one of Scar's enemies this lady is he couldn't care any less just as long as he doesn't have to know her- he can't defend himself against any alchemist, he can't even defend himself against someone with a gun. "At least let me escort you back," she says using the voice of someone who's _here to help you I promise _and Yoki can tell what kind of definition this woman has for 'escort.' "I don't see anyone else. It would be so helpful if you could kindly assist me and direct me to my acquaintance Marcoh, and to Scar," her voice drips with false kindness.

He doesn't even turn around to look at her. All he can think of is how great it is that there's a flight instinct as he runs towards the other side of the car. That is, until whoever this madwoman is rails, "you should learn when to give up" (if only Yoki could see where those words came from, if only Kimblee wanted to know.). "You can't escape me," she tells him, digging her fingers into his shoulders and forcing him around.

The look on her face twists in confusion. "Who…_are you_?" she asks, not expecting an answer.

"Who were you _expecting_?" asks Yoki, thinking that in a very disturbing way, this mix-up amuses him.

Before the two of them can talk any more, (and you're not going to, not while I'm here) the worst sister-in-arms you'll ever know makes her entrance as if she had ever left. You know what about the past- did you forget it? You had better hope not.

(Do you think I'm broken? I'll show you what it is to break) she thinks as she watches the face she's known for years before her. Her arm is ready, she makes that much clear- everything else will just come into place.

"So you're the alchemist I've heard so much about-" _yes. Yes, you are. _The ruined woman bringing ruin to others; bringing about their fall and they fall hard and final. (you're going to hear so much more.) "It's been so long," she says to Scar, and can practically feel the vengeance pulling itself together inside her. For a moment, not because of the cold, she feels lightheaded and powered by a sort of sickly rush.

(Look at me now and see for yourself if you think it hasn't been long, or if it has been, or if that doesn't matter now.)


	15. Justice

**The next update won't happen for over a week, I'll be really busy.**

_Equilibrium...trial, rehabilitation, honesty...this is a strong card...loss...condemnation._**  
**

"Why _wouldn't_ I remember you?" Kimblee says, building her sentence like a fragile wall of ice. She's always gone out of her way to remember them, staring at their grotesquely ravaged selves if there's anything left to look at, absorbing their images as her climatic symphony draws her in. And she's never gone out of her way to forget them, or anyone, but memory doesn't work the way she wants it to. She's never needed to remember before, so she may as well have forgotten. (except when she forgets she does it all the way, because that's how she is,

Scar should remember. Of course she does. Kimblee thinks that's almost for the better (_this will be a good thing this WILL be a good thing _because she's always been able to make her own truth.) This Ishvalan woman won't be much, obviously, she's an inconvenience but at least she's not trying to preach virtue and salvation to her. There must have been some kind of mistake, though.

"I remember everyone." She leans her head forward, she'll make you remember if you listen, she'll make you remember if you make her forget. "Those must have been your family members. The one who looked just like you, except she had glasses and looked to be in better health- she must have been your sister. I could almost feel her pain just by looking at her-" well, it's true. She's not lying now, what made you think that? She lies a lot, yes, it's how she makes her living but she knows what she needs to say. (why aren't you saying anything? I thought you spoke Amestrian?)

(You could almost feel her pain? No, not yet you haven't) she thinks, slamming her hand down, not even knowing what she's blowing apart and not really caring, even though it's reckless and dangerous _because she's reckless and dangerous and this is how she lives_ and she sees a thick gray wall of snow and dust and shards of metal surrounding her like it wants to carry her away, but she's already gone and it can't scare her, and hell froze over long ago. She doesn't need to say anything right now, deceitful creatures, words are, they disguise themselves as her and try to take her over but _she cannot let it happen_. She can feel sand matted in her hair, scratching against the side of her face like someone's trying to get her to notice-she barely does. The cold air tears into her until she feels raw, and haphazardly and uncleanly torn. It gives her energy, the cold and lack of cleanliness, but she doesn't need energy, only conclusions, and she's learned to go without what she needs.

(_If she keeps this up…_Kimblee thinks, _I had a hard time even walking during my first day out of prison and she's been fighting since the war ended_- not that she wants to be like Scar, who looks like one of the madwoman prisoners she'd see dragged down the hallways, traumatized women committing crimes they didn't remember, barely recognizing their own faces, covered in gray shadows like they're painting themselves with their memories. _But really, she looks like she could snap me in half if I let her. But I won't. _) For many reasons, of course, but "you're still only capable of destruction. I've heard what there is to hear about you. You're not much, really. I understand you think I look weak, that there are so many rumors about me. There are more about you. I was sent to destroy you, Scar, I'm not going to fail again." She narrows her eyes at Scar as if she knows her. Maybe she does- endless paths meet often when you come to trust enough to set off on them. And if Scar doesn't know what she means, she never will. (And she really never will.)

(Is that their go-to insult for me? Really?) she thinks in boredom but realizing she could be called other, less original identities, and she's charged with fluid rage that moves inside her as she takes a long and broken pipe in her hands that she clutches so tightly- like she's trying to steal its hardness for herself- it burns, and she forces it forward. This time she welcomes the blood, the blood on her hands and she's willing to bring more for herself and not for her people but for her vengeance and for whatever left of a soul she has. This is about her. This is about them and not about borders or _the civil war_. This is beyond assignments. Vengeance and insanity give the assignments and don't you ever forget it, because forgetting doesn't numb the pain, it brings more.

It's sharp and quick and consuming and potent, and it almost brings Kimblee pleasure, the way the pipe churns into her before she decides it's a better idea not to move, before she gathers all the thoughts inside her mind and puts together what just happened and why she's pressed up against a train. This should not have just happened, who even does this, red eyed madwoman public enemy scorpion _enchantress _spinning hellish webs around her until she's bound, she sneaks in her poison, quick like _oh I don't know a broken pipe_ and there's nothing she can do about it. Scar, _obviously it seems_, is determined to get what she wants and doesn't care what she needs to do.

She can feel some bits of metal flying back, stinging her body lightly as she watches Kimblee struggle to keep whatever composure she has now that the touch she knows has turned on her. She's grasping at the rail on the train like a nervous tic, hacking curses like coughs. "That was where you wounded her, since you said you remembered. The lower left stomach. I was there for about half an hour watching her bleed, but then I blacked out. I don't know how long it was until she died. I woke up with this." Scar pushes her thin, loose sleeve up so that even her shoulder is visible. There's an arm, covered in tattoos and at the top there is a whitish line marking that it's not her arm, and on the shoulder there are small, knotted scars. "Does that sink in?" She can feel the train's inconsistent vibrations.

"But I think you won't have enough time to pray," she continues, lifting her right hand and clenching her fingers. The joints make cracking sounds, like the sound of glass being stepped on.

"I don't pray." Kimblee lifts her head, and her teeth and eyes are enamored with a sort of hate that Scar's never tried to feel.. Her mouth moves like it's being pulled by someone else's hands _what have you done to me what the hell have you done to me you-_ (if I could go back and take your other arm out, if it meant I could rip it from your socket, right now I think I'd like that.) She can feel her own blood washing over her, hot like it wants to make her feel. "I didn't kill you the first time, that wasn't mercy. Now you've done this, and you're forcing me to escape…_but don't think that will last long. _Ishvalan, _don't_ think I'll let _you _humiliate me like this ever again." She chokingly swallows down clot-like blood that's working its way out of her mouth. "You might want to settle the scores. I will break them." Her teeth are red, and she stretches out her palms like she's trying to smother Scar's mouth with the sun and the moon. "These things happen in threes, don't you know!"

She does. And her face can only absorb the atmosphere, she can only grind her jaw and rasp "you get back here, Kimblee!" because she can't reach Kimblee this time. Then again, Kimblee can't reach her. (The stronger man might walk away from the fight but the crazier bitch knows that the war never ends.) She knows that. Destruction always finds its way, sister.

_Xx_

Yoki waits until he hears her breathing become less like violent hisses and more like exhausted sighs. He really has had it this time and he's sick of not knowing how to deal with her and her life and with, oh, let's use the example of being buried under a pile of scrap metal in the snow and almost hit by a train. As he sees the moonlight, he yells to nobody in particular, not caring who hears and who doesn't even if she does, "I am sick of this life!" (don't you think she is, too?) "I can't do this anymore! I don't care, sorry, but I will not let Scar involve me in-" he feels his ankle being grabbed. It can only be her, because he doesn't know anyone else who would hold _anything _that tightly. "That came out wrong," he offers weakly, but it seems she doesn't even care.

"Yoki, we've got to leave now. The railroad security people are coming and we don't have time," she says, looking at the horizon (black on white), only a little nervous on the outside.

"I can't go with you! I don't want to die! I'll find the railroad security…"

"Fine!" she says, exasperated. "When they find out that not only have you been traveling with a criminal but with _me_, I don't doubt they'll find you interesting, but they won't welcome you." She knows he won't leave because he won't know what will happen. But she does. "That woman you met? Did she seem nice and gentle to you? She remembers you. And considering what just happened, she'd _love _torturing you. She's a sadist, the worse it feels for you the better it feels for her." (Close enough, sister. That's close enough.) "They could just shoot you though." She trails off, leaving Yoki's drastic imagination the responsibility. "We really must keep walking and find Marcoh and May." She almost feels sympathy.

"Yeah," Yoki says, beginning to walk.

"You know…there are reasons why you shouldn't be involved. Besides what I've just told you. What I'm involved in is for people like me and nobody else fits in that world, or should fit," she tells him, knowing that she barely fits in herself.

_Xx_

It's not as if Miles is purposefully ignoring them. She just has a lot on her mind, as she always does. She has nothing against these girls, even though they probably have something against her. She notices a lot, much more than she lets on, because of who and what she is.

"Earlier, I heard everyone has a secret, and I thought it was unfair that we were the only ones who had to say ours…" Edwina says, is she understanding the gravity of what she's asking? And Miles really doesn't want to answer, not one bit. She considers telling Edwina to mind her own business, and realizes that would be the first sentence out of her mouth since meeting the girls.

Either way, she stops in her tracks and doesn't turn around. She sighs. "You really want to know," she says, a thin edge lining her voice. She removes her glasses and swivels her neck, not even bothering to think about her facial expression because at this point she's heard it all.

"You're an Ishvalan!" Edwina shouts, and Alice whispers "not so loud, sister, that isn't nice!"

Miles doesn't really care who hears, because everyone around already knows, but still she knows she'll have to justify it, and so she winces anyway. She doesn't even try to hide it. It's only rational, she thinks, that she goes so far to literally obstruct her heritage- Central obstructed her from view, anyway. It's the smartest thing to do in a not-so post war world. Survival of the fittest, not survival of the revolutionary who thinks circumstances can be risen above if you defy them.

"But…how are you even here?" Edwina begins, but Miles cuts her off.

"I'm from Amestris," she says, not for the first time and definitely not for the last time. "My grandfather was an Ishvalan." Her voice tells of her past, expected defeat. "Your soldiers slaughtered my people, Amestrian." And she realizes that's a joke for her to say, since she just watched the slaughter of her own people.

"But your people burned my hometown and killed my friend's parents," Edwina replies, and Alice cuts in- "Edwina! Does she look like that was her fault!" But Miles doesn't feel guilty.

Edwina stares in confusion as she sees Miles open her mouth and emit a choked, forced sounding but genuine laughter, the type that doesn't get used a lot. "It's just that nobody's ever spoken normally back to me before," she says. "Now that you spoke to me as myself and not my race, I really need to thank you." She doesn't count the other Briggs soldiers or the Major General, because that goes unspoken with them. Everyone else, her race is always there. She doesn't expect any of them to quite get why she doesn't stop feeling insecure or why she can't decide which race she identifies with at the end of the day or why she doesn't feel, but know, that she'll always be an outsider. She's, after all, striving for someone else's normalcy. "I am grateful that you looked me in the eyes and saw more than their color."

_Xx_

Kimblee will get by. She always does because she _has to_, literally, because her life and mind and ability to walk knowing she doesn't have to fear it all being all right or not depend on how she can pick herself up out of the holes she digs, and pretend that it never happened. And somehow, she always manages to do it again and again and she can tell saving herself will become more and more necessary, and more frequent, and more difficult. She knows how it works- as much control as she has in the world, she knows where her boundaries are. And she's never been satisfied with them. Maybe that's why she always ends up the way she does. There are many reasons, all worse than the next.

"Hey lady! What happened? You need help-" begins one of the drivers from the train, but without looking at his face, she takes his shoulder in her hand.

"I'd prefer that you didn't stop this train," she says and means it. And they don't back off from her.

"Death comes," she says to herself, knowing how that must look, but it comes for her, soaked in water from hell's lake, its lust drapes itself around her and smothers her senseless. In hell's lake, everyone sinks but nobody drowns. Yes, she's right, she will die soon but she never expected much better. On the path she's going on, it's narrow, but it's wide enough for all the suffering she could never imagine. She knows that and she keeps going. She can't stop. It's how she is. "When I work, I make sure I risk my soul," she says, and she's never meant anything more. She wouldn't say heartfelt, but close enough. This is her truth. She lives like she's waiting for and denying her death; she lives like greed and lust and envy and sloth can all blur into one another; she lives like she's searching for every last one of her limits to push and force until anyone else would break, but she'd make herself just keep going until the horrible craving turns to sensual self-control (but it never does and she'll just keep trying and she knows what she'll get from it and she doesn't want to.)

She risks her soul and she knows it's made its mark on her. She knows that insanity and devastation await claiming her and she's only playing into their plans. But she has a job to do. She's gouged open and she has matters on her mind like mind-over-matter and she'll risk her soul if she can destroy Scar's. But oh sister look at you, she's taking so many risks that she doesn't think stopping is possible, but she doesn't want to look around and see what's going to happen, but she's never lived any other way.


	16. The Moon

**I'M BACK**

…**someone will probably interpret this as YokixScar. If you want to, go ahead, lol. XD**

_Illusion…scandal, denunciation… a secret revealed…an uneasy state of conscience._

She's been on this route before once. She hid the notes then, and she did that _once _but she never thought steps on her path would ever be retraced (maybe you should have thought of that before you even decided to touch them or before you even decided to come up here this is not a place for rest it is white like death and pure inevitability). She never thought much of what she's been thinking lately, but that's just how it goes in this life. Predict unpredictability. You look around and you realize you haven't ended up where you expected, because you never had any clear expectations in the first place and you realize there are few places you can go on to.

Yoki seems to be out of breath, from what she can gather by looking at him. There's enough noise, enough going on underneath the radar and over the ground and hidden in the witchlike trap of the forest (dark green and white, coldly lascivious shadows). "How far have we gone?" Yoki asks, knowing that it will be a long walk. But it is better than not speaking to her at all, because when she's silent he can tell that she's off in some other world, one that may or may not hold her prisoner (it's not so simple but she's bound and always will be) and he doesn't want to be closer to it than he already is. But he'll be fine. He doesn't need to worry. But he doesn't want to know what it is to be her, in a state of permanent suspension in a place where you could go unnoticed forever.

"I know where we are," she says. "I don't think it can be too much longer." Out of all the regions (not counting Central of course, Central isn't a region, it's another world with its own rules that the residents don't always play by but everyone involved dies by and she knows that worse than anyone), she's always distrusted (not hated) Briggs the most. It is one of many places where war threatens throw itself out into the open in the realm of actuality (and you know how actuality can be) but nobody ignores that. And she isn't going to ignore any scrap or revelation of importance, no matter how obvious or dangerous, but she's taken a good hard look around her a long time ago, and she knows what she doesn't know. And she knows herself. (She's had to in this life can she even live if she doesn't know what her life is?) But she has always sensed an anticipating atmosphere here-when she first hid the notes here it almost compressed her, but it she gave into the pressure then, she can't tell any difference.

The long, gnarled, wet branches surround her head, lightly probing her with their voracious endpoints. They are long fingers, lunging to claw out her tongue and tear at her clothes and impale her soul and take her remaining body as their prize. They will not smother her; they are Briggs and they just _want _her. "All right," Yoki says after a few minutes, "I don't really know how to say this," she's looking into the forest and he still keeps talking because it's in his head now and he's not going to wait for when she's killing mad or when she's just killed, "you've made me nervous and I could have died because of you. But after whatever happened to you during the war-" (he knows what happens to war victims and he knows what happens to women, but she's as atypical as they come and he gets the feeling the story would be untellable in many ways) "I can't really hate you for what you're doing. You're kind of insane. But I think you have it together better than these people you've been fighting." He knows how it sounds.

And at first she's not completely too stunned to reply, but at first she only hears _you're kind of insane _and _after whatever happened to you doing the war _loudly and mercilessly; but then she takes in what she's just heard. It doesn't seem real, and she doesn't quite understand why Yoki went out of his way to make his views clear to her when she's not even quite sure what he meant. (How, she thinks, is there ever an in-between when it comes to liking and hating someone?) But she knows it's different with him. He's never had to look around and decide what he needs to focus on and what to forget. (He's not sure what she's even trying to accomplish, other than vengeance.) "I see, Yoki. I'm grateful for that," she says in a rough, unsure voice. She has a lot on her mind, anyway. As she looks down at the ground, she sees a thin line of blood in the snow. (_and it makes her_ think_ my hand is on your face Lotus why don't I fill your white canvas with red like pleasure from hell dripping all on you until you're spent and God only knows I've paid) _She decides her relationship with Yoki is too strange to think about for too long.

In the trees, in the dim and thick forest, she sees a lean figure like the last soldier standing slink her way out just enough to expose herself to only someone who would be looking. The woman notices her onlooker, grinning tired and rapacious. Her long, dark hair lies spread over her shoulders and she raises one hand over her face as if to salute.

(She feels her throat go dry as if filled with sand as the soldier lifts her hand and thrusts it into her own throat and her head is gone but that was her face she swears it looks exactly like her face)

And she closes her eyes and she opens them right back up. "The cold isn't so bad when you get used to it, I guess," Yoki grumbles.

"It's best you learn to accustom yourself," she says under her breath for a reason she doesn't analyze, and she keeps walking, feet in snowlike canvas, torn open and blank.

_Xx_

The Medic in the hospital room wields a sharp syringe, which is filled with a dimly colored liquid. She's just walked in (from nowhere you need to be concerned with) to the room, where Kimblee lays in bed. "I just need to give you _this_," says the nurse who is and isn't, her voice silky with venom as she holds the syringe up. "Are you feeling much better?" Her smile does not meet her eyes.

Kimblee does not answer, of course, but the nurse leans over so that her face is almost _too _close, and Kimblee can't for some reason feel the nurse's breath. What she can feel is the nurse taking her arm and gently turning it over, and sensuously running a long fingertip down her vein.

The nurse smirks lightly and _drives _that syringe in.

And when Kimblee's eyes open, the nurse discreetly faces her (and somehow she's seated on the bed now.) The nurse grins without teeth, her reddish hair smelling like medicine and blood. And she says "you look so different asleep," as she opens her eyes and they glisten so brightly Kimblee thinks they look inhuman, and she realizes that the nurse is grasping her hands.

She looks down at them, and sees her palms and the black markings are _gone _and instead the alchemic designs are painted in white-pink scar tissue. Her eyes widen but she doesn't say anything-she only looks at the nurse for a possible explanation but the nurse has pushed the light switch on the lamp nearby and Kimblee somehow can't find any fitting words, and she doesn't know if it's one second or one thousand years gone by when the light comes back on.

"Happens all the time," the nurse singsongs as she gets off the bed and opens the curtain at the side of the room. (_I should have never come here go to hell Bradley why do I keep going back to you)_

Scar is there. (Scar is there? I am here?) ( you are here she is her you are her she is here) and she's wearing the torn uniform of an Amestrian soldier that seems to become greyer and greyer as she walks slowly to Kimblee's bed. "Look at your arm." Her red eyes seethe and glisten and Kimblee can swear on her grave that she knows is coming that they have just faded _all _to red, like Stones, deadly and intoxicating. "I said, look at your right arm!" and somehow Kimblee does. At the shoulder, there's a border of stitches (small, knotted scars.) Her mouth moves on its own, it seems, "enchantress," her voice is thick with sickness like she's poisoned, "_scorpion!"_

And Scar nods her head, baring her teeth and tearing off her army jacket, revealing her own right arm with all its scars and markings. "See- look what you've _done_ to me," and her teeth show as she laughs, manufactured by hate, and she cups her hands in feigned mirth and they're filled with blood.

The wound in Kimblee's stomach gets a dry, acidic burn.

(Scar hold out her hand. "Look, Crimson Lotus," she says quietly, holding a handful of soaked Stones. She uses her other hand to clasp Kimblee's _head_. "Here," she sticks her hand into Kimblee's face.) "You can live with limits," she says and Kimblee can barely taste as the stones are shoved down her throat, "when your life is a long time gone."

And from the other side of the room, the nurse locks eye contact almost forcibly with Kimblee, saying softly "lady, I'll take care of you" as she walks over the heels on her shoes don't clack (but they almost scream, one brief cry after another) and she raises her palms and there's _the sun, the moon_ tattooed there, and she puts one hand to smother Kimblee's mouth. "These are suited to you," she promises and commands as she takes a necklace of blood-soaked Stones from her hand and drapes it over Kimblee's throat, caressing and scraping. "_I'll make you feel_," and she takes the necklace and snaps her arm back quick and sharp as possible-

Her eyes open and the nurse takes the syringe out of her arm, as if there had never been any necklace of stones or blood or whatever it had been, as if she hadn't just been almost choking, as if- she doesn't know. "All done," the nurse says, and Kimblee realizes the nurse's face looks exactly like hers. But she walks off smiling before Kimblee can say anything.

Shuddering, she looks in the mirror at the side table for a moment. But she can't look for long.

_Xx_

"That's the girl with the black and white cat," says one of the nearby soldiers, but he doesn't say anything more because she reaches out and hardens the grip of her palm and slings it to the back of his head. He won't be unconscious for too long, she figures. The girl with the black and white cat? Another nameless criminal like her, she thinks, shouldn't come arisen so soon from the gallows of fate and Amestris. Besides, nobody should be going after a little girl, she thinks. But she's never really had to protect anyone except herself before.

"Miss Scar! Mister Yoki! You're okay," May says. Well…in one piece. She shakes her head, and May doesn't quite understand the gesture. (Why do you expect me to be all right?)

"Have you found the notes, May?" she asks. But before May can describe how interesting they look or what she thinks of their meaning, (she already knows what's there- memories, and she's never had a good relationship with them) she turns to Marcoh and May, looking at them both indirectly.

"We have to leave," she says keeping her voice low in case there are any other soldiers around. "They know we're here." (Marcoh I know you know what will happen) (I'm not going through this again) She is tense, but she always is, and that's the best survival tactic she's thought of for a while.

She never stays long, that's true. But it's better than staying around and never being heard from again. (And hopefully, she thinks, she won't need to learn firsthand just how true that is just yet)

She's not quite sure where she's taking them, but she's used to running so much that it doesn't matter.

_Xx_

You can't be serious, Miles thinks to nobody in particular. But she's always ended up thinking like this- where she goes, her blood (each side clashes with the other, but blood is always red once it's out, no desire for war). However, she's now assigned to search for a little girl and her cat (do I look like I'm from Central?), help find Scar (am I the only one who thinks she won't be found because she doesn't want to be found?), and conference with the most notorious slaughterer of her people.

"As for Scar, she's still missing, as well as her companions, meaning they all must still be alive," she intones.

"As I had observed," Kimblee (just what I really need right now, to be reminded of what just happened a few hours ago by some roughneck snow queen lackey) replies in a clipped tone that suggests Miles stop telling her what she already knows.

"Then great. You should focus on getting better and we'll deal with Scar," Miles says, beginning to walk away steadily and silently. (I have no business with you. Don't expect me to be a representative for my race. _The eternal mantra_). She needs to check back in with the Major General, anyway, whatever that giant man was, he seems to be more of a pressing matter.

"No, you won't," Kimblee tells her. "I was assigned to bring her down once and for all. And I'm only warning you because it's the proper thing to do." She only cares what proper is and isn't when it cam benefit her, but it benefits her a lot. "I'll make myself be the death of her, or she'll be the death of me."

By this time, Miles has turned around and she takes her glasses off. "Look, sweetheart," she snaps, "I don't make rules around her but neither do you. And the one rule here is survival of the fittest. That just might mean if you let your guard down and from what I hear you _do_, you might just see what happens, and I know you know what I mean." These days, she decides, if it's not one thing, it's everything else.

_Xx_

"You're all in one piece?" Raven asks rhetorically. (Kimblee's never had better than a love-hate relationship with rhetoric.) He's just came, and he has some old man standing behind him . "That red eyed bitch sure ravaged you, didn't she?" (_Yes. She did. Now stop talking about it. _But Raven can't understand, to him, it's a fixable wound. To her, it's the worst realization to come yet.)

"Don't I know it." There isn't much pain, really, but the little pain there is almost is the worst possible kind- pain, she thinks is fine. But not from _her_. It's the kind that can never be relieved, that can never be drowned in any amount of pleasure no matter how hard you try.

"Well, don't worry. We were so worried about you, though," he leans in, smiling lecherously- (she knows what Raven wants from her and just about every other woman he works with, but she's never brought him to it even though she knows it might just give her more information, but it would give her an even lower status because she's a human and nobody who works with the homunculi can escape being looked down on then.) and she pulls out the Stone.

"You were worried about this," she almost laughs. It's ridiculous, really. ("We were so worried about you?" Who are they kidding?) They wouldn't care less if she lived or died, any one of them, Bradley and Pride especially (_…Lust would have found you so amusing_), but still she always goes back. Back to the lies. She can live with lies. No matter how ridiculous and horrible they can be, she knows they're better from the truth that comes for her.

_Xx_

They must be looking for her again. Well, she's always outran them because she has nothing to run back to. But now she has three other people with her and when there are multiple people there are always attacks- she knows she'll have to leave soon, if not just separate, then _leave them completely_. She's only endangering herself, and she somehow doesn't want to endanger them, either.

Take it one moment at a time, because you never know what will happen, you'll hear, but that's the exact reason why you have to always predict the past and remember the future.


	17. The Pope

**I have been SO BUSY. But I think I might have more time…soon…**

**Lol, Scar isn't even in this chapter. She'll be back in the next one though. XD (she doesn't like so much attention, I think. XD) **

In some ways, Kimblee really hates Bradley. She realizes she must be respectful towards him (and his wife if she's involved, but "Selim" is an entirely separate story that she doesn't want to hear the end of), she realizes he's just doing his job and that hating him will waste her energy when she has people _closer _who she can afford (…more) to hate. Like_ HER _or even that nagging half-breed Major Miles. But still, she just can't stand him sometimes, as her tone grows pleasant and her diction more formal as if by instinct. She doesn't regret a single kill, but she realizes she's dug her grave irreversibly by investing in Bradley. She can pretend all she likes; at the end of the night she'll just have ended up giving over what little information she has to Bradley as he tells her to continue being their human to do what she's ordered and shut up, and she doesn't learn much more than she can find out on her own.

She's found out more than any of them would ever give her credit for. She's found out that the more she finds herself depending on Bradley and the more fixed in place she is, the less she can trust any of them. "Keep following Raven's orders for now," Bradley says distractedly from Central. (She doesn't mind telephone conversations. She doesn't have to see anyone's reactions. Nobody has to see her face.) That's to be expected, she thinks (if it gets _too_ long taking his orders I could probably just kill him quietly I see how he looks at me I kind of want him to die anyway). Once, she expected better. (And she can think like the enemy now, she has many and she knows how they work.)

"Oh," she says impassively (take the _im_ out). She won't make it seem as if she'll accept being used (but she's done it before) but if she puts one foot out of line, she _knows_ that she's replaceable and that Bradley and Pride and even Raven won't take so kindly if she doesn't do what's needed of her. (It was better with Envy. We pretended because we wanted to. But we never thought we had to pretend to respect each other.) Bradley pretends. She lies.

"Don't worry," Bradley still sees right through her vanity and expectations but he doesn't care. "In good time, you'll have control."

"That is nice to hear. I'm grateful," she doesn't say that she could be dead before _good time _decides to happen, she doesn't say authority is already somewhat hers, she doesn't say where her regrets lie. "I almost forgot- I met with Edwina Elric," drastically switching the subject, making it seamless as she can manufacture. "She won't say a word about _the mysterious biological weapon_" which isn't hers to talk about either, but she has to bring some of her observations back and there's a common enemy, so she capitalizes when she can. "Is she there under your orders?" (she wonders for too long of a moment if she'd have considering going if she hadn't received the order to.)

"No, I did not know. But she is researching Xingese alchemy. Of all the places to go, she goes to Briggs." Bradley ponders firmly, hanging up the line before he can hear any reply.

The dial tone scrapes monotonously in Kimblee's ear, a confected scream that does not start or end or climax or even release. It takes her a moment before she puts the telephone back on its stand, grinding her teeth. Right now, she isn't needed. She's never sure whether or not that's for the better.

_Xx_

"General Raven, I apologize for all this commotion. But it isn't every day that we're under siege by some kind of…monster," Oliver lowers and strengthens his voice in the way he always does when he needs people to immediately listen, the voice that brings fear and respect in allies and enemies alike.

"A monster?" he leans in, and Oliver can tell that Raven is someone who, for now, needs to be handled carefully.

"We were unable to kill it," Oliver says. He knows how to make it sound like he's giving out classified information (these days you never know what is and what isn't), the kind people die for knowing. "We think it might be a biological weapon of Drachma's." Common enemy. He can draw Raven in there, make him forget for a moment the glare in Oliver's eyes like he's imagining the many ways a General can mysteriously _die._ "The Elric sisters didn't tell us anything. They're the Fullmetal Alchemist and her younger sister. Somehow they know something about the monster. But they didn't say because they, according to them _couldn't _say. The very idea," Oliver emphasizes, "that a State Alchemist under the President's orders could spy for Drachma is troubling." More troubling than the truth? No. But it isn't time for truth, it's time for negotiations. "I…general. Would you care to interrogate them?" he asks, as if the thoughts just occurred and he thinks Raven's the perfect executor for the job. "It didn't work with me. And I could have tortured them for information, but they're only young girls, really, and I have a young sister myself…" he trails off, honorable voice.

Raven smiles. "Ha. Well, I suppose that makes sense. You seem very protective…all the women around you must be taken into that," he says as if he knows from experience (all of you Central dogs are so easy to read, you believe you're ahead of everyone else without even thinking about them).

"I wouldn't say so. I focus on my work…but I fear it's taking its toll on me." Oliver looks down at the table, knowing that Buccaneer must be laughing as he hears this. "I will not be able to do my job when I am old. But that creature…it was unbelievable, it could do anything. It seemed like it could even _last forever._" (Not really.)

"Major General," Raven leans in and grins like he's a seller and a king and untouchable, "you could last forever." He notices Oliver's eyes widening, but otherwise, his face stays the same, cold and observant. "And your soldiers too. Imagine an immortal army." (_it's never been done! You know you could imagine it…even if you don't want it…but you do! You do, don't you!_) (If he's playing me, I'm prepared, Oliver thinks. A few more minutes.) "What do you think? Imagine if you couldn't die. You could be Fuhrer. You could rule the world," Raven says, knowing he's exaggerating but with that kind of power, greed's risks are worth it. "You're in or you're not."

"It's a nice offer," he says firmly, "but how would it affect my soldiers?" (If I pretend to go along, he won't even suspect anything.)

"When that day comes," Raven replies. (_IF that day comes_.)

You never know until it's too late.

_Xx_

Kimblee walks past the corner of the hall, where the telephone booths are lined up and she sees the austere, forbidding expression on Miles's face. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting," she knows how to dress tones, careless and false kindness. (I'm sorry that I'm stuck with you.) Miles, in a way, brings something to do. It's not boring, being with her. But Kimblee can think of better qualities than eventful.

"You use that telephone a lot," Miles replies. (you classless straitlaced half-breed. Don't you think I understand all your insinuations? Oh, you do. I know you do. And you don't know the first thing about me.) They always try to be as caustically offensive as possible, whether it's Miles or the newspapers, (just because some of it's true, that doesn't mean I'm any less.)

"I'm just checking in for business. _The Fuhrer_ decided to speak to me. And so I came. I'm busy, Miles. I'm sure you'd understand," she says casually as she can make herself feel, make herself sound when her teeth only want to clench. "I need to see Raven next." Miles doesn't answer. (you're even worse when you don't talk.) She doesn't imagine she'd enjoy knowing what Miles is thinking right now. Miles glares behind her, through tinted glasses, her mouth a strict, down-turned line. She snaps her head in one direction, some fallen-out strands of white hair flinging over her shoulder, straight and rigid and tilted in. (more rigid than HER but you still look like her just a little too much you look like her)

"You were just in a hospital bed with critical wounds. Now you seem like nothing ever happened to you," (seem) Miles says carefully, says it dangerously. "_What did you do?_" The sallow, whitish pallor is still in Kimblee's face and her eyes seem just a bit bloodshot. Other than that, Miles is suspicious, suspicion is something she's always known and needed.

Kimblee steps back almost without noticing, her hands move to pull her coat close over her body (she can feel the blood all over her seeping out half dried and caked all on her permanently it's her torn open everyone knows and she can't stop it why won't it stop why does it still pour all out over into her it's thick and blackening and hardening why can't she scrape it off). She can feel the Stone radiating in her, an unearthly quivering in her chest, spicy cold and sharp hotness, pinpointed like a fatal wound. Her eyes twist. "None of your business," she forces her mouth open, forces herself back. "You know…I could ask you _what you had to do_ in order for the Major General to keep your secret." She laughs silently to herself, anticipating Miles's response.

"You close your goddamn mouth!" Miles orders in a way so steely that Kimblee nearly recoils. "I'm not going to go easy on you because you pretend to be so nice or because you're some _victim of the Scarred Witch _or because you're in a high position. How did you even get out of prison? The Major General doesn't even know."

"That's also not your business," she replies, walking ahead of Miles but she can still feel those red eyes_ in_ her.

_Xx_

"Thank you for your cooperation, Major General. I think my superiors and I soon will gladly be able to have a chair for you…we can do this together, my com-" Raven doesn't get a chance to finish his speech, though. May the best man win. But Oliver knows that this victory isn't the end, even though it would be so much better.

"No, we won't," Oliver smiles in satisfaction; brandishing the sword that hangs off him like another limb (or like his consort) and he plunges it into Raven, deeper and deeper until the sword goes entirely through his arm. "Was this the arm Smith lost?" he asks. Rhetoric is best used when the other party doesn't want to think about the answer to the question. "Becoming old is terrible for some. Maybe once when you were young, you cared about this country, back when saying you cared meant something."

"What are you doing! Don't you know what you could have had!" Raven yells, clutching his forearm. The red is barely visible on the dark fabric of his coat.

"I don't want your chair! I already have mine here in Briggs!" Oliver shouts, pushing Raven below into the thick mouth of the pool of cement below, wet and languid. "Immortality means nothing to me when it betrays my comrades and countrymen, Raven," he says to himself as he slides his hand across the flat side of the sword, clearing blood off his gloves that drips down to his boots. "Call Miles," he tells Buccaneer who has been watching in awe and silence.

_Xx_

"You must hate me," Kimblee says wryly. She tilts her head against the cold, metallic wall (either it's cold or she just is overheated.) "You're Ishvalan. I'm an alchemist. I know how this goes. Do you want something from me?" she doesn't expect an answer, but it wouldn't surprise her if Miles used one of her clenched fists (do you only un-knot them to salute to that warlord Major General of yours?) "Do you want me remorseful and living in misery and guilt, not knowing how I can possibly apologize effectively? Do you want me to offer you some of my power and knowledge? You don't seem like that type. I could tell you how they died, your people," she breathes.

"I'm sure you could," Miles's eyes are hidden but Kimblee knows what they must look like.

"Then how about I tell you every last detail. And then let's see you keep that straight face you're so fond of-" she's looking down to her chest innocently, swaying her eyes up with a scheming gaze.

"I told you to shut the hell up." Miles talks directly into Kimblee's face, cornering her into the wall. A few silent moments later, a soldier walks by and requests to speak with Miles. While Kimblee waits outside, she crosses her arms, folding herself to the wall once again. Surprisingly enough, Miles comes back only a few minutes later.

"Raven's missing. You must have some idea what's happened…"Miles says. If anyone hears her- well, nobody will. "If he gets lost in this fortress…"

"Oh, I know what can happen. He could be dead. And I could be making my own decisions around here and not get ordered around by some little desert Drachman like you…" Kimblee says, beginning to stand straighter.

"You just think you're so scandalous. Fine. You still have to tell me what you mean," Miles doesn't say, but order.

"You think I'm just their whore or mouthpiece, don't you?" Kimblee says, teeth bared, eyes in twitching slits (you need us more than we need you). "You don't know anything about me, Miles. I'm scandalous to most people but if you only knew-" she cuts herself off to catch her breath. "Fuhrer Bradley says I can make my own orders now."

She has enough power to feel it slowly deteriorating like sand in her fingers as her hands lose control.


	18. The Queen of Cups

**I have never liked writing fight scenes too much. But I liked this chapter.**

There's nothing edible here, she thinks to herself, surveying the abandoned building. She wasn't expecting to, anyway, so she isn't disappointed. If she goes long enough she'll collapse, supposedly, but she hasn't yet, not after all these years of whittling herself to bones and arm and thin-lined rage. Those with medical knowledge (Marcoh has told her) will say that hunger brings malnutrition and euphoria, but it doesn't bring her disturbances. After all these years of running, she doesn't know where she has left to go, only that she cannot stop. She will wake up time after time, arched back and shivering in some kind of throes of hate (right arm of vengeance take you to hell and I'll see you there one day, one day when there are no measurements) from some kind of dream (what she will do, acting on the order of the path, knowing she has nothing to pray for and the one thing she can count on will eventually run out and then- well, if she isn't in her grave by then, she can collapse. It's an orderly word.)

But there is little order in her life, and from the dust-clouded ground, she can feel jolting shifts, and she sees two men. (It's never over and she can't collapse because she already did a long time ago). They call her name (_Scar_ they call her that is the only name she knows or deserves or can claim, they call her, but she doesn't know them and they'll never know her.)

"Scar, we've found you!" one says loudly enough to make himself a presence larger than can fit. She's found them. Briggs, she decides, is a place she'll stay away from for now because she can have her vengeance right as she needs it, she just doesn't quite have it yet- but she's leaving soon and never coming back. And she doesn't think about where she will go because her arm is out and she knows when defense is necessary and that's all that matters right now.

"I see you Northerners found me," she stands up to her full height (which isn't much compared to them but what you see isn't what you get anymore.) Briggs men are known for being tough and so is she.

"Well, we're from Central," says the first one. (I should have known! You always seem to come for me from your opulent ditch of a city so you can pull me back in)

"Miss Kimblee's been waiting for you." (well obviously, she isn't here; if she was, one of us would be dead or dying right now. This must mean you're just trying to fight and demoralize me, then bring me back to her so I'm in just the right shape to be able to attempt to fight her off. She'd want me alive, she wouldn't let her workers have my head, she's been wrought enough by this _haven't you I'll show you so much worse_)

"So you think you stand a chance against me?" she asks flatly and maybe this is just a trap. But she won't make any more moves just yet (that worked so well back then_ stop STOP this is different_)

"Well, if we were ordinary men, then I suppose not. But…" their faces twist in malicious satisfaction as if they can see her perceived future (so different from what she imagines. _You want me broken, Kimblee, well that's too bad for you- I already am and you can't do much more to me._) The two men flex their arms and bend forwards until she realizes they're not bending, they're transforming themselves (she remembers her she can feel the air from then permeating into her now humid with blood and desperation she can almost see a soldier watching from the shadows) into chimeras. She's halfway between the past and now, and a part of her that she can't quite control drawls "chimeras? This should be eventful" (accent of the desert, land of the scorpion's reign) and she tears her coat off and lets her arm stretch out into the dimmed light.

Before either of them can lumber forward (if either of them can crush her arm- they could shatter her bones with bodies like theirs but that can't happen), she lunges down, ravaging the frigid cement. One of them leans over towards her, thankfully not close- she only gets close when she needs to- "when alchemists can't touch me, they can't kill me," he says, "so a long-range attack could blow you right out of the water." (whatever he's planning- _oh she told them about the pipe didn't she if they have one now I swear I will _tear her arms off _and then she can't use me or anyone for components now will she _) "not so fast!" he yells to her as she begins escaping to a side alley because she really doesn't care who wins at this point, just as long as she's still upright. "You destroy the ground from far away. I know about your tactics," he tells her as she coughs some thick, translucent liquid down onto her, pinning her hand to the earth. She pulls her arm but nothing is working, no struggle is strong enough, (next time? You really have lost your mind, bitch, there won't be a next time when you can't get out, and if you can't escape then you don't have any way to leave.)

"We can do this the hard way," the other says, "or we can just take you away and Miss Kimblee can figure out what to do with you." (will you? I've been in this place before and it will be _her _fatal mistake if she comes within a lifetime of me, but you'll never really know.)

She stays silent. Whatever they're going to do, she doesn't care- they'll leave all the blood and closure to Kimblee, but she's never been one for closure (and don't I know that.) She's used to pain, and she just has to wait. She has all the time in the world and all the patience in heaven and all the resignation in hell.

_Xx_

Rizen doesn't breathe as he opens the door. (_Back in the war I didn't, and I didn't die then._ But he knows this is different and he's not going to pretend otherwise.) (Why did you do that? You knew what he was capable of.) But he knew it was necessary. In the end he's always been a soldier from Bradley's lines, and even as he works to bring him down, he knows what he wants.

There are whitish holes in the darkness, but it's just Black Hayate's eyes staring expectantly at him. (_I'll always be watching you from the shadows._ Where he is. You will watch and what will you do from there? He knows.) Black Hayate turns his small face upwards, more concerned than Rizen ever lets himself look.

"I'm fine…just fine," he says as if the dog could understand him or believe him. He has to be fine. Leaning against the wall, he tries to focus on his dog or headache or whatever else he possibly can to not have to listen.

The telephone rings like an alarm (during times of crisis they're on all night and all day) and he hesitates to answer it, knowing it could be Bradley (you know my son's secret, don't you?) "Good evening. The flowers you ordered are here for delivery," says the Colonel's voice (I thought she had stopped drinking.)

"Colonel…what happened," he asks.

"All right, sorry. I have a whole lot of flowers around right now. If you could help me get rid of them…" she says, sounding like she isn't really talking about flowers, sounding harried and forced. "Lieutenant, something happened, didn't it."

"No, I'm fine." He tells her that because it doesn't matter whether or not he's fine, because she needs to hear he's all right and he knows it. "Ma'am, the flowers…I don't have a vase." He notices how calm the dogs look, and whenever there are _presences_ they're not supposed to be.)

"Oh," she says. "You're sure you're fine, though?" she asks, and she knows the answer and she knows the answer she'll keep receiving.

"I'm sure," he says, closing his eyes. "Thank you for calling, ma'am. Take care of yourself." He's not sure how well he can.

_Xx_

Kimblee wonders how much they're neglecting to tell Winston, not for the sake of his happiness, but for their safety from her. Edwina and Alice aren't dishonest girls, from what she can gather, but they'd do all they could to protect their friend. And, since they seem to see her as their greatest threat (this must explain why you're so insolent to me, Edwina, but I have greater things on my mind right now.) She doesn't actively want to hurt them- well, Edwina, at times; but Alice, she doesn't care about, and Winston she really doesn't mind (it's strange and almost endearing how he seemed to trust her.) "Winston…" Edwina begins, "I know how this sounds. You're a hostage." (So are you.)

"Wait…a…a hostage? Alice, what is she talking about? I just- you're not serious." There's only so much he really understands about their world, not being a part of it. He knows how dangerous it is- and he's fine being as far away as possible, but this is more than he'd like to deal with. "Edwina, you could at least explain."

"Winston, we're just telling you the truth. I- I have to be a human weapon." Edwina looks at Alice, past Winston shaking his head in disbelief, and with her back to the bars of the cell, behind which Kimblee watches them. (depending on the angle, you wouldn't know who's behind bars and who's free.) "I was told that I have to be a mass murderer."

Winston stands up. "Then don't do it! Why do they think you're just someone they can tell to do these things?...you're trying to protect me. And you think they're going to do something with me if you don't do it." He puts his head in his calloused hands, silently folding against the cell wall. "I should have seen this coming." He exhales, forced and unstable. "This doesn't make any sense."

Edwian either doesn't want to hear this or just doesn't want to acknowledge it. "Alice. If we do this, you'll get the Stone." She speaks more quietly than usual.

Alice has been silent. "What are you talking about?"

"_She's_ got it," Edwina gestures over her shoulder to Kimblee.

"No." Alice tries her hardest to assert her meaning, but her meanings usually don't get across unless she uses her armor. "I meant that we can't use it because it's made of- you just-sister…you know what it's made of."

"Alice, you'll get your body back," Edwina says; Winston looks on in confusion but stays observant. "You know I'm just trying to help." (whatever it is, Winston thinks, I don't even want to ask.) "Kimblee," Edwina turns around to her other observer, slung against the wall looking on at Winston. "I'll do it. But I'd like to begin with Scar, please."

(_Girl. What are you even trying to do? _But she rationalizes that Edwina isn't trying to get any reaction out of her, because she's seen that happen.) She bows her head limply, slightly, off center from her neck. "Please? You're a humble little lady right now," she says, resigned, as if nobody's meant to hear it except herself. They'll find Scar. This isn't what she's concerned about- Scar doesn't need to be found.

"She killed Winston's parents, and since he isn't going to, I'd like to avenge their deaths." Winston looks ahead, not wanting to show stress or grief, he tries looking back to Kimblee (she had seemed like she could connect with him, in a way) but she looks to him as if she's in some other world.

"All right. I see. I suppose I understand why you're so fixated on her," she answers, hollow voice and eyes cast down and closed so she can see into her mind, her one escape, home of feeling (and she needs to feel, the more she needs it, the less she can trust it.) It makes sense that Scar, mistress of vengeance and whatever titles she's been given nowadays, would leave behind people who personally want to see her gone. But Kimblee wants to see her come apart as well. It will be her to get rid of Scar, she knows Edwina will eventually decide to move in another direction like the falsely moral child she is, create and destroy because if she can't bring vengeance back to Scar then she won't have anywhere outside of herself to put it. This path, she knows, is a fine place to get lost in, but she's never needed to be found.

Start with Scar. Yes, that sounds fine. Edwina may have just spoken now, but she hasn't heard. She can't quite trace her finger around the unnerving feeling that Scar brings her, but she doesn't care to, because she knows thinking about these matters will just make you embedded in the path, misplaced soul and scarred sanity, and she can't let her life become a long time gone.

_Xx_

The Elric sisters have once again proven to be distracting, she notices, having spent the better part of half an hour watching them tear apart the surroundings, fighting the chimeras, while she still struggles to free herself from the strange bonding fluid below her. (just think slattern you'll get out of this and everything will come into place these girls won't be yelling anymore you'll never have to see those chimeras again just- just keep doing this come on you've done more powerful actions) all in her, biting her dry lips, wondering why don't the chimeras just come over if that's what they said they want? It's strange, she thinks, these people say they follow orders but act as if they never received them. (don't you do the same thing? That's how she can tell.)

Almost as if out from a hidden entrance, coming out to bring destruction to her once again, her arm shocks her, breaking from the trap, shooting her upwards, dripping in her own blood. (I've lost more before. I can barely feel it.) "You've come for me again," she says to Alice and Edwina, who look at her, troubled faces.

"Accept your punishment," Alice says (_I already have, child, and I'm never turning back) _as she and Edwina move closer. (_you're going to fight me again?_). She lunges her arm, locking in Edwina's small fist around her. "I have to eliminate any obstacle. Including your arm."

But Edwina's arm doesn't shatter and anyone looking on wouldn't see a battle or descent. They'd just see Edwina saying "you took the bait, you insane bitch," (I suppose I should have expected that but your alchemy is beyond me, well, I'll just do what I always do, destroy all that I can touch and I will never feel) (you and your people can't do that anymore) and the earth is in all directions and as she goes downwards towards Edwina she freezes as if she's blocked the ability to remember how to move. Edwina could probably kill her now. A part of her distantly realizes that, but all she can see is a young boy standing not too far away and too close, looking right at her and she'd never look away. (It's you, isn't it, Winston. I didn't intend that, but I haven't intended a lot, and I'll never be able to apologize and you probably know that but I can never say it.)

Edwina and Alice force her down, sealing her arm in some sort of metal welded around her. "Winston! What are you doing!" she yells (well, I could say the same thing, but I think you know, Edwina.)

(she should have known this would have continued, shouldn't have wanted to think it wasn't endless, shouldn't have let any of this happen-) she looks into Winston's face and sees someone she could have been long ago, someone gone to her, but not gone to him. Someone alive and deserving of it and she can't quite make out his features correctly from here but she can see the way he moves towards her like he's considering both turning around and never coming back, and coming to her and guiding her away. Either way, she knows he isn't going to stop, and whatever he's going to do she can't stop him, not when she has no right or will or reason.


	19. The Star

**This takes too long, due to my schoolwork T_T but so much seriousness has made me come up with hideously cracktastic crossover ideas with this story when I type (Black Swan, Panty and Stocking... I don't even know why...)**

_Harmony based on the psychic and the spiritual in all its forms…harmony broken in the destiny of the seeker. Physical harmony of short duration._

The soldiers have found her as well. She can see a group of them, wearing white coats that once were clean, standing by a woman in black (her dark skin is bizarrely familiar, even if it's washed out in the climate.) None of them have directly acknowledged her yet, but they're obviously here for her. Whatever they plan to do with her-she aware of any and all possibilities- she guesses she could accept it, even accept whatever Winston knows (he had a gun last time and there are more this time, and there's no end in sight.)

The woman among them walks forward like she's walking to the front lines (she wonders, was she always like that?). "So…Scar," she says, (it's always strange hearing the word, it's like she's taking on not another identity, but any identity.) "I'd rather not do this to one of my people…but you can't go free." (what are you talking about is Amestris not into mental manipulation- but your coloring, you can't be, they'd have turned you away or arrested you…) The woman points a gun at her, a dark and slick and diamond-gray weapon like a sword that can lie in your pocket. (she stares back at her, shaking her head to herself.) "Edwina, Alice, I have to thank-"

"We can take it from here, I think," Edwina says. "Wait! Winston, what are you doing!" (she's been watching him, directly and out of the corner of her eye if it comes to that, but she can always feel him watching her, can practically feel his thoughts as they grind his head as they struggle to escape out his mouth as words to force.) "You can't be near her."

"Edwina. I'm fine," Winston insists, squaring his shoulders and looking straight ahead in a line that he can't quite place. Whether or not his emotions are steadily hidden is none of Edwina's concern, but it always ends up being so, he thinks, his head isn't anyone else's and it's time he was able to claim it for his own, know someone was listening and not have to force anyone to listen because that's what they'd be doing already. "I'm going to talk to her." (And nobody in this damn world is going to stop me right now.) Scar, he notices, doesn't look like she wants to see anyone except him. He's been told he's strong and he's been told to stand back, but nobody's told him to use his judgment so he's just had to make his own.

She looks up as if she's looking at the only conclusion her future can ever host. This isn't her battle to fight; it was a long time ago but with change comes time, and she knows it's his time now. He won't kill her, he's not even armed, she won't walk free, but that's still the same. She's used to knowing what it is to not be free- and maybe now he'll be free, and she'll know what it is just a little, by looking at him, or maybe not.

"Why did you do it?" he asks her, lost and jagged voice of all the remaining pieces of a broken home that can never be put back together, a sound they both know but can't find the right words for. He's heard the sound of his voice (Edwina and Alice had said over the phone they'd be back in a few months but they never even called back; Paninya had said how hard it was to remember her parents and he almost hadn't been able to reply; Kimblee had said "you don't want to go near Scar if she's already gone near you" in a way that Winston could have read as threatening, but he knew better.) He knows that this world of pain you can't quite see until you're forced to look, you go to this world and you never leave, it's not his. And he figures he'll probably never really understand it.

"Nothing I say will change the fact that I did," she says to them, but they're not there anymore- the Rockbells and her sister and even she isn't there anymore, but she's all that's left and she knows it has to stay that way. No matter where she goes, she'll never be clean of it. "I can't…" for a moment she's back there, for a moment that Winston may be able to notice but only that, she can see her self bound in white and the doctors there too, someone in there will never be revived. "I can't make any excuse for it." He already has some vengeance. "I have no right to say anything about it," and she has no words left for saying, not anymore. None of her words are meant for use. Not for excess or love or excuses or even (especially) vengeance. Distantly, she can feel her left arm-she had neglected it, along with the rest of her irrelevant, out of reach health- "you want vengeance." And if she's already had hers, then he shouldn't miss his chance because Fate only gives chances to want vengeance so much you'd not stop at anything no matter how much you wanted to, and if someone like him lets his chance go, then she'll never have hers.

He starts walking away quietly, taking a rag from the ground, and he clenches it in his fist, wringing the cloth. And he sits himself on the ground across from her. "If I don't bind your arm you'll bleed to death," he tells her, not even giving her the chance to respond because he doesn't want to know what she'd say; he beings carefully wrapping the cloth around her arm with shaking hands (he can feel her arm, tense and thin, through her dense, rich blood; and he can hear Edwina attempting to get a reaction from him). It's not so hard, he thinks, wondering if he's doing it right- her arm is retracting into her and he wonders if she even notices she's doing it. Her collarbone sticks out in a way that it looks like it's being pulled out (Edwina's looks familiar and strong, hers looks almost ghostly sensuous.) "My parents would have done this. I don't know if I can follow in their footsteps. But they saved your life, and I guess that's got to mean something."

"Why," she says, throat dry and raw from the frigidity, "you can't have forgiven." It's not done, it shouldn't be done, not for her- she's been reminded long ago that this is war and always will be. She should be dying, but she knows more than anyone that it never matters what should happen, and she's survived because of hope's absence.

"Well," he says, thinking about it, "no. I haven't. But I've got to do something." And that's all he needs to say, she understands, this is his place for his war and his shadowed need; she has hers and she's still searching but she's got to do something as well and she knows exactly what. (someone must sever this chain of hatred _says her sister as she closes her eyes she's right back there back in the desert, and she reaches her right arm, but sister flickers into shadows and the soldier is there instead from the shadows saying _we must endure_ and she still has her face but the closer she walks the further away the soldier gets until she runs so fast she can barely breathe but then the soldier is so far away she can't be seen and the only person in front of her now is Kimblee and she's saying _you must not forgive the cruelty of this world _and she walks closer to her and she reaches out her right arm but the very second her finger touches her, Kimblee looks her in the face and turns her hands and face to the sunless, moonless sky and her face turns to sand and then she's _gone _in the desert sky._)

And all that's left is Scar and she opens her eyes. "I know," she tells him and he looks at her for just a moment, but he turns away rapidly. She looks at him as he walks away to Edwina and Alice, but Edwina doesn't see her looking- or maybe she does, but she knows this is between Winston and Scar and all the dust that never settled in the earth.

"I'm fine," she hears Winston tell Edwina and Alice (maybe even her.) He's going to be, of course, even though he isn't right now, but he doesn't have to be.

And she doesn't need to think about being fine right now. "Winston might think you're all right," Edwina snaps over her shoulder, "I don't." (of course he doesn't think I'm _all right_ with him, he knows where I am but he doesn't know me. There's a difference.)

They walk away, but Winston looks back for almost a moment, not bothering to see Edwina or Alice's reactions, (he can swear she mouths thank you to him) he can see her biting her mouth in a sort of enthralled, glaze-eyed pain he'll never know. Her eyes seem to look in some other dimension, she seems to be in some other state of physical state, but he turns his head away. And she sees the three of them leave for somewhere safer.

The woman, she notices, is still pointing a gun. She can tell that she isn't going to shoot, though. Their people shoot to kill, but not people like her. And she isn't a regular Amestrian war vessel, she can tell- they are not all the same, even if they have all the same collective reputation. "I need to ask you a question," she rasps, "you're the one called Miles."

Miles just says "yes?," guarded, as if she's not supposed to be killing her right now. Questions mean power means trouble.

"You said that I was one of your people. Why?" (she can't be one of those we-are-all-each-other's-sisters types, not in that business. She's got to be Ishvalan, but how?) that's the way she can phrase it without having to reference the truth.

Miles should be bothered by this, she should want to curse this woman for forcing her into the old lament, masking common ground as another opening to drag her into and never let her rise from (her proper place in society, as if she has one, because Amestris has no use for her and Ishval doesn't want to see her; Amestrian men expect hate and Amestrian women expect resentment; Ishvalan men come in the form of long-dead relatives and Ishvalan women come in the form of a living ghost who's looking for blood when all she's got is bones). And Miles just doesn't think Scar can find what she'd be looking for here, aside from vengeance (but she doesn't know what Scar is looking for, not really, vengeance has many living definitions.) "My grandfather is Ishvalan," she says, "I told you I was one of your people because basically, it's true. Even the law agrees." Scar doesn't really have anyone now, though. But Miles thinks one day she might be able to, if that day were to come, and it won't. "If we had met in any other circumstance, my red-eyed sister"- she knows it's almost too much to ask for a favorable circumstance; Scar nearly recoils- "I'd have preferred that."

(We haven't and if we did it would have been during the war. And if you're any sister of mine, then that sort of family fits my life, I suppose.) But she doesn't say that. Idealism can't be argued with. She wishes almost to be able to stand as Miles can, so sure, but she's fine in knowing she never really can.

"But how did you even end up in the military?" (why would you want to?) She can tell that's what Miles will hear. That's what she's trying to say.

"I thought I could change people's views," Miles says. "But there's only so much that someone like me can even try to do." She knows Scar can understand the meaning of _someone like me_. Someone who ends up in Briggs for being a combination of every kind of someone-like-me.

"It's a nice thought. But I don't think anyone, not any of us and not any of them, can," she replies. _Any of us_, probably nobody, Ishvalan or not, man or someone else, will change Amestris's mind (especially someone like you who went against the land and heaven), and none can undo the war; and she'll never be free of it.

"Well," Miles says, "I see what you mean." She sees but knows that not all red eyes see the same. "But I think in some ways I already have made some kind of small difference." Some ways, yes, but it must mean some victory for her that she's in the uniform (or assimilation.) "An Amestrian convinced me that I could." (you're an Amestrian citizen too, Miles, he had told her as if she had forgotten- well, you would too if you were Ishvalan by law). She realizes how it sounds to say it; but it's true and she figures that Scar needs some better truth.

Whatever Amestrian made you think this was, as you said, Amestrian; Scar thinks. It will take more than a new idea to get rid of the old ones. The old ideas don't just leave, they live among them; having them inside her for years after they have vanished for everyone else."After the war, the land was destroyed, and so was I. I was the place in the sand that was torn and ravaged into an open trap. That's where my wrongs stay with me. I don't deserve forgiveness, and I'll burn like the filth I am in my hole until I'm all gone, like the filth I am. But that day isn't here yet." She looks down. "Even someone like me can appreciate someone like you."

Miles doesn't know how to answer a response more personal than the situation calls for- usually when it gets personal, she can respond with harsh words, because it's an entirely different kind of personal, hostile and prejudiced. She knows she can't begin to work out the full meaning of Scar's words, but she doesn't have the time to anyway right now.

And she looks away, knowing it hadn't been such a great idea to say all that out loud, not with them all around, giving them the upper hands, letting them know- but they already did, somewhat- (they could already tell what you were)- someone, she thinks, has to know. But nobody should. Nobody really ever can. But they've seen part of her reflection now, and she needs more than all else for the reflection to comply to herself. The cold's sharp spears cut her but she's already known their methods. She's been made weak before.

_Xx_

This time it will work, this time even though she can barely see through the swirling clouds of fragrantly thick snow, even though she can barely swallow (raw throat, coated with a sandlike grit feeling, must have been that medicine), even though she can feel _her _presence all around and inside of her, even though if she can't succeed her days' numbers will be even fewer- Kimblee keeps walking, but it's getting harder as it's getting more necessary. One of the soldiers walks closer to her. "The weather doesn't look so great. I don't know if you'd want to be out here for your own safety, and you need to take off your jewelry in case the cold-"

"You know I'll be quick," she says, not to him, she'll have to anyway, even though next time never means what it's supposed to. Her own safety is most often irrelevant to her orders, and always irrelevant to her nature, and she knows what it will bring her, and she'll just keep living around risk and sin until she's permanently drawn back into them, and she knows as sure as she's coming for Scar that the day is coming for her.


	20. The Tower of Destruction

_The imaginary creations produced by the desires of man…powerful…a plan brought to an abrupt halt…unexpected shock…downfall._

"Don't tell me- she's coming too?" Edwina asks Miles in agitation. (_I can tell you're worried, you might think you have to always be strong but you've never really questioned if always can be tested_.) May, from her side, says, "Edwina, she isn't bad!" as if she can tell a clear definition of bad. (May, if you weren't so honest, I'd have known you were lying and have been content.)

"Well," Miles says as if to prepare everyone, (she isn't quite sure what and she can't say what she knows, but she knows Briggs hasn't seen this type of happenings, and new news is bad news here) "and Scar, I'll have mercy on you if you help us," she says firmly as she does most of her words because in her place that's the only way for her words and not just her identity to be seen. But she knows Scar can see past that, or else she'd have someone else's name.

"I'll do it," she says, "you can trust me for this." And they will, and they'll hate her even more for it, she knows. This is the kind of action she knows (_I'll tear this place apart if I have to but you'll never see my scars again_) (_I swear if she goes near May…_) (you don't even want to trust me.) Winston looks to the side, and she can tell that he doesn't want vengeance, but a satisfaction less attainable. If he wanted vengeance, he'd have had it by now. While she's looking at him, she supposes that she can understand why Edwina wants to protect him- nobody else can.

She snaps back to attention when Alice asks, "why do we have to kill them?" to one of the Briggs soldiers.

"We can't be alive anymore. It's our time," one of them- she looks, it's the chimeras she had been fighting- "you don't know what you're saying."

"But I do," Alice explains, taking off her helmet. "Because this is my body and I've spent years trying to get my real one back. If you have hope- you can. I'm not going to give up because I will still have a chance as long I'm trying," she says what she believes, and if it's worked for her then can't it work for others? (_I don't know if that's true, Alice;_ but she doesn't say so.)

"It looks like the snow's trapped us here," Miles comes back and announces. "This…shouldn't be happening." Leave it to me, leave it to the red eyed woman's group to wreck a mission, she thinks.

"This is a mining town, isn't it? Just go underground," Yoki says. "There's got to be a tunnel that goes to the other side of the mountain." (what? Well…I suppose I can't regret you, Yoki.) Alice, Edwina and May begin asking questions. "Now I'm paid attention to," he laughs to himself, even though he knows it's no time for laughter.

"Thank you," Miles says, "now we just have to think of what to do about Kimblee…" (she grits her teeth, _Miles leave her to me I can think of so many things to do not about but to her…but it won't work like that, I can tell._) "If any of you haven't met her- she isn't to be trusted. She's very dangerous, and we need a good strategy." (_In Amestris you do, but this isn't political anymore._)

Winston looks as if he's thinking delicate, intricate thoughts. "We can pretend Scar's taken me as a prisoner. It could work if we pulled it off right," he says. (What are you thinking? This will cause trouble, there are better plans, the last thing I need is to deal with someone else at a time like this, the last thing you should want is to be right there as it happens.)

"Winston, I don't know if that's such a good idea," Edwina cautions. As Winston knows, Edwina saves all the hazards for herself.

"It might be a bit over the top, but it isn't as if it's unrealistic, and you could pretend to chase after us as she pretends to escape with me. I mean, it's not as if she'd purposely endanger me when there are bigger things to worry about now."

"Winston, she could, and it's still dangerous for you, okay!" Edwina shouts. "I'm telling you 'no' because nobody ever told me 'no'!"

"Edwina, this is your life you're endangering here and Alice's too. I can't just watch you guys march to your deaths anymore." Winston stands taller but not by much.

"You have to…" Alice says. "it's the only way any of us can go back to a normal life." (_maybe that's true but if I had as many choices as you did I wouldn't be arguing about them_)

"Scar," Edwina turns her head slowly. "If you do anything to him…" but she can see Edwina isn't made entirely of threats. She wants to protect.

"I know," she says as they all begin leaving. "I'll do it." They know, really, they just don't want to work with her and she can't blame them.

Miles is still standing there. "You know, Kimblee's here," she says, but doesn't quite let out any hidden meanings. Scar's perceptive, though, nobody expected her to be. (she's here? I know. She's wherever I am.) "It would be best for you if you cooperated as directly and quickly as possible. But I know that you've been on a long path. I know you can do this, however you carry it out," she says with no tangible effort.

"You can count on me, Miles. I'm doing this for my people. But this is something I have to do for me." She lowers her voice and can barely hear it. She's not sure why she's telling Miles, only that she won't be judged, because they both know it's not the time to open doors to information that keeps her imprisoned.

"If you became this way, then I know you will do it," Miles doesn't know the full extent of Scar's breaking and rebuilding and gradual unraveling- but what she does know is fine with them both.

She's going now, and she'll never be able to go back.

_Xx_

She's made it up to the height of the building with Winston (she's holding him to her side tightly so he can't outrun her grip, but he's not leaving anyway. He hasn't asked any questions, not as she told him to not look her in the eye, not to look anyone in the eye; not as she exhaled uneasily in anticipation; not as she walked to the edge of the roof and looked down but didn't move one way or the other for better or worse.) She's right on the edge now, right on the end of the tower and the end of the world, and if she lets vengeance take her it just may fall. "It's the next time now, Kimblee," she says and they're all looking and they all hear but only one of them really knows. She forces her mind away from Winston and what he could possibly (impossibly) be thinking. "When we first met, you came for me. I knew what to do then. And it's the other way around now," she tells the story, somehow endless because there is no real conclusion, just an imagined end; the story doesn't come from just Ishval or Amestris or hell or earth or leftover poisons or shriveled flowers but it comes from inside of her and it's her only language and it's not her ability to find out if or when it will ever end but she hasn't felt like this and maybe she isn't meant to but she is right now, and she'll never be free and she'll always be her, she'll always have her unspoken words that were heard once but not more. And they'll be heard now, she knows.

(For a moment she closes her eyes and she can almost see the war that has been her, she can see a world of red and white sand and she lies on the broken throne of a high priestess and she can see the hands reaching out, palms with the sun and the moon but they aren't high as desperation and they aren't low as mourning, there is no direction except for the stars that are not seen and she gets up and reaches her arm as if she's never touched what is to be her.) She looks down and her arm is still where it is, reined in.

Kimblee just stared at her a few moments, not making eye contact with anyone around her, Scar notices, but not being able to look away from her. (she notices a vividness in Kimblee's eyes that doesn't seem to be there for the better, it seems trapped in grotesque sensuality and frozen in a spot she's always been in but never looked at.) (She's almost been there, or somewhere like it, these places can't be too far away when they're nearly the same.) "How can you!" she rails, but she looks high into Scar's face, and Scar knows her now. Her influence is greater than it wanted to be; and she holds her pain not close enough, it washes down off her.

"That's an interesting thing for you to say," she tells her, because she may as well be as harsh of a poison avenger as she's wanted to be, as wretched of a torturous enchantress as they've thought her to be, as ruthless and all encompassing as she's needed to be. But mostly because it really does make her wonder (how can you! how can you?) what made Kimblee curse rather than attack, what made her talk as if right now she's been told to live as nobody, what made her talk like her life is a long time gone? (what made you think I had seen you in my place? Did you just know?) (You will be there. That's why I'm here. And then I never will be again.)

And she watches as there is no attack and there are no words; it can't be for too long, but it feels like this is what she's known for lifetimes, or three (one for you and one for me and one for her.) But she can't wait too long, because Edwina's running in now. (you know what to do, come on, she thinks.)

Edwina looks up for a moment and silently moves her head in the _yes _direction, the right direction when she doesn't quite know how wrong it all is. And Scar looks back, but is still on the edge.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Kimblee! I thought you said you'd make sure Winston was safe!" she takes Kimblee by the front of her clothes, dragging her hand across her face. "You bitch. Can't you do your job?" she yells so loudly Scar can practically feel the way Edwina's teeth have clenched and she almost shudders imagining the feel of metal grinding in her chest. But Kimblee doesn't answer, and (I see your vanity's failed you again) Edwina loosens her grip. (Nothing to say? Something's going to happen then, you said you didn't pray, so I guess it's good that you don't expect mercy.)

"Please don't touch me," Kimblee says almost inaudibly, as she spreads her arms open to the air (to her), and begins drawing her hands close together as if she's taking the moon and sun and making them _both_ destroy each other at any cost (just try. Come for me. You'll never leave. It doesn't matter.) But Edwina twists her hands out of reach of each other, (_you'll be your own destruction, Kimblee, you just didn't want to see it, you didn't want to look at yourself and see me_.)

"Have you lost your mind!" Edwina asks, (Edwina, if she had, she wouldn't say. Don't ask about those things, it never works well. And maybe I have too.) Kimblee ignores her accusation, stepping to the side and walking slowly, closer and closer.

She wonders what would happen if she stepped down and surrendered, if she jumped off the edge, if she killed Kimblee with her own two hands (not one), if she destroyed the surface she stands on, if the places had never been set to switch again and again until there were no clear names to the place and there was no boundary for anyone to find. But she knows what she has to do, what she is needed to do. Vengeance. The path never ends, she knows, but she must do what it tells her, and she always listens, even now, and she knows what she has to do.

And as she places her hand to the metal below her she can feel Winston's eyes on her, she can hear Edwina yelling, she can feel the snow turning to ice on her, but they all seem like they're not really happening to her, that she's somewhere else entirely, feeling what she's never really imagined. But it is happening, and she throws her head back as rubble swirls like a massacre of snow through the air.

_You left everything in ruins and you ruined me and you let me stay alive Kimblee you just watched me and you left me to fall to dust and I needed vengeance for that _

_And now I'm taking you._

And she looks down and she sees fate and pain and someone she could have been and someone she'll never really be clean of but someone who will never be rid of her either, and she doesn't need to look much further to know what can happen.

"Scar?" shaken and disoriented. Kimblee waves Edwina away passively while crashing her fingers into her palms, an ill expression on her face. She sees Kimblee, and she opens her mouth slightly and se shakes her head _yesyesyes_, words she has no voice for. But she doesn't say a word. And she doesn't need to.

Kimblee's head moves almost invisibly, _no_, as she reaches her hand out to Scar but she will make no effect on what has already happened and what is going to happen and what has always been happening, what she never had the ability in her to stop. But Kimblee can't make sure Scar will never have vengeance because it's too late; she can't touch her; can't make her break finally and not ever again. She's walking away now, holding Winston close as her right arm but not there, and she either is completely silent or saying all the words that have wanted to come from her mouth as plagues and curses and vengeance with no end, just an eternal building up to ruin- but Winston says no words.

(And her head falls like she has fallen on mouths made of ice and her spine shivers like a whip and her breath quickens so fast it's bringing her to another point where she sees from the top of a wave of sand in some other desert, she sees the soldier come close to her, saying "you didn't forgive, but you can never forget, not even if you want to."

And she rises from the sand. "What does that mean?"

And the soldier tells her "you already know," and she shoots a bullet into the sky and it rains the sun and the moon in torn shreds licking her) and she's walking away amidst snow and rubble on the roof and she can hear Kimblee calling to her. And she turns her head over her shoulder, white hair flowing like it could disintegrate to shadows along with her. And one last time, she looks to Kimblee (not anymore, not ever again, vengeance). And she says it quietly, but she knows Kimblee can hear her- "I know you now. You're gone."

And it is as if she's never spoken, because she turns around from Kimblee's frantic face, turns around from her (their) final destruction and continues down her path, the only one she'll ever know, her path that nobody will ever enter again. And she hears Kimblee call. (But she must already know what I've done to her.)

And she never answers.

_Xx_

The cold scalds Kimblee, (), it harms boundlessly. She clasps her hand over her mouth as her shoulders jolt, as she can see Scar over the top of the building high above. "It's the next time now, Kimblee," she knows it's what she's hearing, she grinds her teeth like diamonds scraping mirrors and roughly swallows down nausea. "When we first met, you came for me. I knew what to do then. And it's the other way around now," Scar prophesizes (do they know what it means they can't but they hear it they can't but I do) and that's the only sound that matters now. It's forced into her and she'll never stop hearing it.

The thought comes to her that she hasn't been breathing, and she sharply drinks in thin air (what have you been expecting? Everything that could have been threatened. But not this.) They've switched places? Or did that already happen? Or were there ever real places, because heaven and hell only know how she hates to be looked down upon and when she gets so high the only place she can go from there is descent. (you don't really know me, you don't know where I am, even if you know where I'm going,) She wants to go back, if only to have been assigned another region, or to have been in another place, or just to have been given different orders or to have been successful one of these times- but it's still the next time, and she's still here- no. It's not that time. Not anymore. Not for her. "How can you!" How did this even happen? She knows all the answers somewhere, but she'll never look for them, they'll just fall over her.

There is snow carving white lines in front of her eyes, but all she can feel is some liquid heat, washing over her, tasting her, burning her, fixing her in place. Heat rises in her face, and her head goes light as forgetfulness as her chest and shoulders are thrown by shallow breaths. "That's an interesting thing for you to say, Kimblee." She shudders, and closes her eyes, imagining what she'd do if she could somehow get up there, if she could somehow rise-

Two small hands crash into her, she almost reacts with her own hands instinctually but she snaps her head down instead. It's Edwina, of course, she'd just have to get involved- "what the hell is wrong with you, Kimblee!" she yells into her face, but Kimblee doesn't respond because she's too busy wondering what is wrong with her when, just look around, it's all gone wrong and she's always been one to follow orders. "I thought you said you'd make sure Winston was safe?" But all she can think to do through panic and obsession (move over Edwina she is not your concern she is mine and I am hers don't you see that) is stand still. Edwina's mouth twists down in distaste and she draws her metal arm back to slap Kimblee across the face so hard she can feel slight cuts from the fingers, so hard she has to regain balance. But she doesn't say a word, and keeps looking at Edwina, realizing how startled she must look. "You bitch. Can't you do your job?" (be quiet you child you sound just like them I take it from her but not from you) the heat smothers her, exposes her, claims her, but she shrinks back from Edwina before she can be overpowered again.

She grits her teeth, eyes wide like they're being forced open. "Please don't touch me," she softly asks as she inhales ineffectively and feels her eyes slide shut as if she's in pleasure or ill, and she moves her hand outwards, come now you are not my sister but I know you know my blood- yes! A part of her thinks as she anticipates the feeling that will never come, no! the rest of her is thinking, and she sees Scar looking at her downwards as if she's remembering (this is not the past no wait this is now don't you hear me) (but no. It's all done.) She doesn't know where it comes from in her, but she opens her mouth sigh-laugh-shriek all together. "I'll come for you then," she says under her breath. "I can't escape you but you can't escape me…if I can't escape you then you can't escape me…if you can't escape me then I can't escape you."

Edwina shouts "have you lost your mind!" and it is as sudden and horrible, like Scar's metal inside of her, as Edwina grabs hold of her (lost my mind no stop you don't know the half of it have I lost my mind oh no I can't have I lost my mind have I escaped you) she bows her head down and clenches her teeth in a useless, desperate attempt (like all of hers are) and distances herself from Edwina without touching her. Edwina moves towards her and she raises her hand, not knowing how to get rid of her without distracting herself- she is close to being there- but hell listens to her, she's done anything already. She's put her mind and soul and spirit and body on and over the lines of sacrifice enough times and here real risk is here, anyplace Scar is, anyplace where she herself is because in thoughts they can never be too far anymore. She needs to terribly to destroy Scar, a need that comes from and will become her own destruction- and she knows destruction, she needs Scar in her claim once again, if only to know that the future doesn't need her right now.

And Scar looks down at her. Her face is hate and need and familiarity and calmness and reality- she can't fantasize as she does with Envy, she can't avert her eyes and discontent as with Bradley, she can't pretend the way she does with those who haven't known her mind. And she feels the heat spread over her like it's always been there. Yes, she knows, she hears Scar saying yes, _it's happened now no my sister you're not my sister you're my other and you're gone now, you have feeling but it isn't yours to make. This vengeance, you were my death and now you're not- now you're mine, you're the nights, you can't leave now and you never will. _

This could have been her chance. But it's Scar's now. Her life is a long time gone and her mind, she knows already, is under Scar's hands, and she's in Scar's hands as well, and she'll either have to stop pretending or the world can do that for her and she'll just fall apart.

The spaces are reversed, she knows. She will never have vengeance, she'll just be there in the destruction, and she'll be half of all that's left behind. Edwina sees it in her, some of it, but she can't really know.

This is Scar's final act of vengeance. But Kimblee knows she can't use her acting anymore.

No, she can see herself saying somehow. "Scar! Come back!" she says as Scar's hands reach down and she bends to tear apart the buildings and metal is falling everywhere but she keeps calling as the dust washes over her and the metal crashes down and the storm is her, the both of them, both raining over her. (You could have had vengeance but you settled for me.) She turns, looking at her, as if she can see all of her, her hair flies back as if to ensnare her further-

"I know you now," she hears Scar say distantly, but nobody seems to notice anybody but her, she wants them all to vanish- (she has had enough time of being viewed) "and you're gone." (No. I could have been you and you could have been me, But maybe we're a bit of both.) And Scar takes Winston in her hands and she begins leaving and no, she knows now. She had always known somehow what could happen, and what would happen, but she didn't want to-not in this way-

"Come back!" she's rasping, but Scar does not come to her, and she doesn't look back after she leaves, and after a few seconds she's gone from vision. But Kimblee knows she will never stop seeing her- her hand is over her mouth (the moon), but her other is still in its position shaking, just a few seconda ago it was reaching out to Scar and it still is, she'll never be rid of that craving, and she doesn't move, even as they're telling her to. _I'll come for you I have to _she thinks, but she can't anymore.

(_sister don't you ever look and see what you hadn't couldn't shouldn't have done? Do you ever realize what's gone so wrong, what's always been wrong, where you are, where you can never be no matter how much you want to? where you always will be? And would you do anything to not know, but you already have?_

_Now you do_.)

She hears herself call somehow, but it's not answered, and she doesn't know when she started, and it comes from her and she knows it's never really going to end.

_Xx_

And she's gone, in a sense, at least. They'll be looking for her soon. But she's good at being away from where she's expected. There's too much on her mind right now, can't you hear the way she isn't speaking, she walks faster and faster but she isn't outrunning anything- she feels the ice protect her.

Vengeance. It wasn't what she had expected. It's still in her, she knows she'll never be rid of the need for it-she has it now. She can still hear calling somewhere inside of her, some name that isn't hers.

"What just happened?" Winston asks quietly. She can tell he's somewhat afraid, but it isn't in the front of her mind.

Mostly to herself, she says, "I know what happened and what never will, but not really what's going to," and she says, "I don't have the right words for it and neither does she."


	21. The Fool

**Typing takes too long. D:**

_Man progressing…Lack of order, carelessness in promises, insecurity…_

She's walking behind them all, not trying to catch up but not trying to leave. She has the feeling that if she kept walking at the rate she is now, she'd lose track of them, and she'd end up somewhere else but that isn't a possibility she's allowed right now, and she doesn't want to know where she could end up.

May and Winston seem to be speaking solemnly with each other. She wonders, even if they have the differences of worlds and identity, if they even notice the differences now. (Children notice unconsciously sometimes) But right now, she can barely hear them (she doesn't, therefore, think of whether or not she's too distracted to listen).

It's almost too dark in the underground tunnels to see, but there isn't any visual she has to look for now.

_Xx_

"I mean, I just feel terrible," Winston says, not looking at May but still looking down as he moves forward. "I've got customers waiting and my friends in Rush Valley who I left behind. And I don't even know what's going to happen here. I feel like there's nothing I can do to help any situation anymore." (even though he just did, but he can tell, he's trained to know when there is wrong deep within or very small and pinpointed and on that roof he could see the way to hell, and he knows that some problems have no permanent fix.)

May doesn't tell Winston _he doesn't need to feel bad _or any other ineffective words that don't work (she might be young but she knows that kindness can work and so can knives and treaties and so can words, but words are another story.) "I do too. My clan is at home waiting and I can't leave. It's not that I want too, but…" she bites her lip and closes her eyes.

"I know," he tells her, "I wish I could do something."

(But Scar can hear them and she knows that somehow, they will not be able to to a single act of benefit against the power she has witnessed- that strange man underground, and that creature and this country- she can't tell them, not when she hardly knows).

She realizes that those beings haven't been her focus- should they have been? She knew her mind was never really like another's, not even before (don't look at me like that I'm just telling the truth, better I say it then one of them…)

Even as they go further underground, Winston doesn't feel too cold, having come prepared with warm clothing. (but he had done cold the second Scar had started talking on that building and got colder when nobody responded as Kimblee kept speaking the same phrase over and over and colder still when Scar kept talking to herself under her breath in Ishvalan as they left, as if she didn't even realize she was doing it.)

Scar looks behind her shoulder, but there's nobody pointing a gun to her and nobody running after her and no visible regrets.

_Xx_

It didn't take very long for all the soldiers to leave the room according to the clock, but you know how time is. Miles doesn't have those kinds of acquaintances. She has trouble, though, which is close enough. Since the blizzard is still going on, (it isn't as if it rarely happens but it's never welcomed and it's more inconvenient than ever, but she'll find a way around it) there isn't much she can do. (She's never liked having to be passive.)

Major General Armstrong is nowhere to be found, she's heard. He's somewhere nearby, she knows it, but he wouldn't be missing if he didn't have to be and that's just another hint of a situation broken into pieces hidden in undisclosed pieces, the kind of places she's not supposed to know about. She's almost too occupied trying to make sense of it all to pay attention to her surroundings.

"What even becomes of people like her?" Kimblee asks, almost a sort of half-formed not-quite rhetoric. Miles can't see her, but can hear her harsh, reeling tone. _Her._ She doesn't ask, she doesn't have to. She can't give an answer, though. So she just does one of the few things she can do with Kimblee-ignores her.

"What happens to her," she says quieter, but with more thought in her voice, and Miles gets the feeling that this is one question that means more than it sounds. She turns her head.

Kimblee's eyes are bloodshot, as if she hasn't slept, but Miles knows that there could very well be a much worse cause. "Are you drunk?" she asks, knowing the answer could be yes, after that strange encounter with Scar, and knowing it could not as well. For a moment she really does wonder what ever could become of Scar if fate is always just out of reach, but people fall closer, or they realize they'll never run away.

Kimblee turns her face from Miles's eyes-she supposes there are thousands of questions in her head that she doesn't want Miles to hear (am I? Wouldn't you like to know, wouldn't you like to know the first thing about me and you never will, I don't even want to). "She found me," she says, noticing that her hands are shaking so much that she can't even completely make out the patterns on her hands. "She can't escape me and I can't escape her. Did you see how she cam to me? I heard her," there's a hostility in her voice that always presents itself, but Miles realizes it's washed and warped to a less powerful presence by- she can't quite tell. (better for you, if you can't say, you've never felt it, but when you do, you barely think of describing it)

"I don't exactly catch your meaning," Miles tells her, not sure if she should, there are other things, after all, she can say. "I had been getting some unusual calls from the Major General lately, though." This is unknown.

"No, I hope you wouldn't have known," Kimblee says, "I got some calls too," her voice is sharp and thin as her breathing is shallow and uneven as her eyes are focused on her hands. (_Some calls, just wait until they hear about this_)

Miles doesn't say anything in return, and Kimblee returns to silence.

_(what even becomes of people like you?)_

They won't need to find her. She'll be back soon enough anyway, if all goes well, they won't look for her if she doesn't give them any additional reason to.

And she hasn't killed recently, she hasn't taken anything that Central's eyes can tell is missing. She's taken away predictability, maybe, but they've never really known exactly what to expect from her. She's their vengeance, she's their killer, but it goes unspoken even right here when nobody is even acknowledging her that none of them can tell exactly who she is, even if they can make claims as to what she is.

And now she isn't even sure of what she's to be considered. She'll always be Scar, and all the connotations associated with her (some of them, she's beyond reluctantly accepting, and others would have made her an outcast had she been labeled with them when she was still living in her village, before, when she was a real woman.) But now she wanders in the narrow tunnel (like her mind is a snare but neither seem to be ending anytime soon) when it will happen, when they will happen because she is still Scar but some parts have changed- wherever she'll go from here, she can't imagine it. (Prison is a place people like her escape from, but here is a place that people like her end up trapped in, and she doesn't know, because nobody can, the exact end that closes paths like hers or if there even are ends. She knows what can happen, inside, in ways that cannot be described to others- but what she doesn't know is more important, she reminds herself, retaining it in her head, countering the frozen air that seems to gloss over and through her, as if it's trying to blot her into the earth).

She realizes that she's still standing still and that she feels detached from her body and she almost can't breathe and she clings her right hand to her mouth, willing herself to silence the unmistakable-to-her sound (destructive symphony) of a twisted, struggling reflection of breathing. She can feel her chest caving inwards, thrusting outwards as she attempts to regain stability (even though it's not for her) and she looks ahead. (I may be weak and mad but I cannot have regrets for this)

(But she had wanted to, she had wanted so much, she needs to say it_ call me Ishvalan one more time they've called me worse I know you can you thought you could just come back and ruin me well you already had if I force you to look will you see what you did if you don't then how long can you go on you thought it would end within a day well that day never ended I can't make you into me but I will make you feel what it is to be me if I can't do the same to your soul_ she had wanted to walk away, she wants to feel her right arm made unclean with blood if she's going to be unclean, she'll act on it) she can't now, though. ( you did not accept my vengeance the first time and now you can never be free of it, since I can't; you alchemists, I don't count myself really as one, but your people would call this equivalent exchange but I'll be honest, as a woman this is me giving over pain).

She can't really be an alchemist, she thinks (but I am a woman, a fallen one, but so are you in a way and fallen women endure pain until it claims us, we understand where we see ourselves; but even though we are bound we are not united.)

Her breathing has settled by now, she notices, clasping her mouth closed. Bound. She is not meant to be free, she is not meant to live, but she is meant to remain and if she has for all this time then she will continue because she does what she must or she does what she can.

She flinches- strands of her hair, long and white (rivers in hell) are trailing down her back. She reaches for her neck, tracing her fingers under her hair, spreading it out. With her hand in that position, for a moment she can feel how thin her throat is, moving her hand downwards she can feel the beginning of the unexplored abyss of white scars all scattered down her back. (sinful sensuousness, you) Not hers, not anyone's, the past's. She must accept the idea of a damaged self. She can tell how it must look.

They talk of the Stones ahead of her but she knows great horror comes, and it seems almost impossible.

_Xx_

(Miles already thinks you're insane anyway) Kimblee has given up on breathing steadily. The hallway seems to twist in a circle, even though it just moves straight ahead, straight ahead (you have two good legs, run for your life) so far she can barely see the end.

She's supposed to be waiting. Pride will come. She's better at following orders than resolving to carry them out, and she leans against the wall, imagining the feel of shadows across her face and forehead and arms and throat, she can almost feel her hands burning as if her palms are being torn apart, but somehow it feels familiar. (you wanted it, you came for it, you'll never run out if it.)


	22. The Queen of Swords

They're examining the notes under the tunnel- (they're just words, you've already detached yourself from them, you can do it now again.) There's a very strange sound ringing in her ear, the sound of others speaking, words in her language.

"Maybe it's because…Miss Scar, your sister was influenced by the Xingese purification arts, right?" May ponders the descriptions in the notes of gold and immortality. (why anyone would care to live forever…if you can live forever you wouldn't need gold.) "Immortals are called 'true beings' in my country," (then what is a false being? She thinks, I haven't known one) and she says "they're thought to be the perfect soul like gold is the perfect metal. I think that's why immortals are called beings of gold." For a moment, she wonders what May would do if she still wanted the stone- because she really could have it (you see yourself getting older and she's keep power, and greed for whatever promises those stones can make and break) (you can have so much more.)

(Underneath there is sickness and decay, but the gold coating can make up for it.)

"Some people also think it's because the person who showed Xing alchemy was an immortal with gold hair and eyes," May continues. (_immortals, beings of gold- the only beings of gold can't possibly be golden anywhere but on the outside. That story may be more than just a myth, but one day, they might say the same of me and one day I'll be forgotten. Stories get old and change, more lies or more truth, whichever is better. There are not true beings in the way you're saying. There is only truth.)_

"That sounds like Edwina and Alice," Winston says as if Alice has any coloring of her own now. He knows that as powerful as the two of them are, they're nowhere near immortal, even if to him, it seems like they try to be, or they just live like they are.

"Everyone!" Yoki puts his head through the opening that passes as a door. "I found the exit!" the others start moving towards the sound of Yoki's voice (what if you went the wrong way?) but she still keeps to the back, maybe for safety, but she knows that's not the truth.

As she gets outside, the light hits into her eyes, and it takes her a moment to reopen them. White as purity, blinding and all-covering. Of course, it's just snow. She's seen what it can do before. Covers can be lies, she knows, or maybe they're not even meant to last. She walks through it though, taking its remnants clinging to her.

She doesn't know where she's going, (you should know, there should be some clarity) but there already is and it's not the time.

"Hey Alice! Is that you? Are you okay?" Winston yells suddenly, pulling an armored leg out of the waves of snow.

"It's me, don't worry…thank you!" Alice shifts her weight onto the armor's knees so that she can talk face-to-face with Winston. "Things have changed," she says (Alice, what do you know? She wonders, but she doesn't even try to think more about it.) (I haven't changed. Why am I even thinking this, no, I can't) "Central's troops have been taking over fort Briggs and the Major General got called down to Central," Alice tells Winston. (that can't mean anything good for you, but it just means more of the same to me).

"So that just means…" Winston says, knowing trouble is coming but not which kind. It comes from every side imaginable.

"We can't go back to the fort because it's unsafe," Alice says, and she's used to danger anyway.

"Then where can we go?" but nobody can tell her, nobody wants to hear her tell them the hated truth. (where else can we go? Nowhere is safe for you now. You have two good legs but they don't matter. There's nothing to walk to.)

"We should eat now, I guess," says May. "I have a lot of food and water for us all!" (but I can't. Not now.)

She stays closest to May, but she's still distanced from the rest of them, enough so they don't need to acknowledge her. It's for the better. "Alice…you're sure this will work?" Winston asks, and (I can tell you're not talking about stopping. You mean everything, don't you.) "I mean, isn't Kimblee going to notice if you just leave?" (she already did.)

She doesn't say it, but she knows that there are times when it doesn't matter where suspicion lies, because it's always there for her, and she just needs to be cautious of it. If you have to leave and if leaving is all that matters-

No place is safe, but she doesn't expect safety, she can't have expectations.

_Xx_

"that's you, isn't it, Fullmetal?" Kimblee says. Of course she recognizes her. Her mind, as she's always known, isn't allowed to forget.

"What do you want?" Edwina flatly says.

"I really am in the right place," she says to herself. (are you? I am, I haven't lost myself now, nobody can say I've lost command or station.) (you didn't really think you had it wrong, did you? No, no, you might ruin orders too often but I know I couldn't- have I?)

"What are you talking about? I just came here because you said you'd give me the Stone if I helped you find Scar," Edwina says, and she's a good liar but the lie doesn't fit within the illusion.

"You _haven't,_ though, Edwina," Kimblee says, barely calm but still she must, and she can feel half of her face rising in a twitching sort of unintentional inversion of satisfaction. "And I know why you're here. You don't need to lie to me now." (you haven't helped me, you selfish, preaching child; none of you ever help.)

"What makes you think I'm lying?" Edwina doesn't confirm, but she doesn't deny, almost as a sort of policy.

"It's obvious to me. There's tension around you," she says.

"Aren't you quick," Edwina deadpans. (you have no idea, girl, don't think you can just keep doing this, you want quickness? So do I.)

"Did you think I wasn't? I did, after all, survive Ishval," (obviously you're just like all of them, you only analyze what you need.) It occurs to her that _I survived Ishval _could be seen as an incorrect statement.

The ground, she notices, is so white, so free in its dominance, the snow can swallow anyone it wants to own, and all the world around her fades to white as she places her hands to the ground. White is in all directions, and there are no directions, white in her face, white like it's always been that pure, so pure that nobody can take its power, and it never vanishes, and it smothers her in cold, stinging. As soon as bring herself to stand, to take her hands off and separate them from touching, she walks away in the opposite direction.

Edwina will find her, they always come for her in the end, because in a way she's theirs, but she wonders if one of these days she'll just leave and keep going and nobody will notice.

_Xx_

Alice collapses to the ground. (what now? Is it the moisture on your blood seal? Can you choose to just stop being, Alice? She feels almost ridiculous for wondering.) "Alice!" Winston runs as best as he can to her side. "What's going on!" he never likes the answers. May is right by their side, stroking Alice's metal (she can't feel, May, don't try, it just will end up bringing feelings you don't want, she doesn't say, she wants to tell Alice that if she hadn't come so far she wouldn't have so far to fall.)

"My soul is being pulled," Alice says softly, and remorsefully, as if she can sense physical pain.

"Alice, what do you mean?" Winston pleads.

"Did you say you felt your soul being pulled?" quiet, reserved, but nobody tells her. She heard. Was it the same that everyone else heard? She can't know, can't ask, but she knows that there are some answers. Within. (I've had that happen _no she doesn't mean like that think of logic no there is no logic no place at all there is no place left)_

_Xx_

"I see this is what you do after being blackmailed," Kimblee says (there are better ways to handle that. Just ask me.), regaining as much composure as she knows how, still tasting ammonia in the back of her throat.

"What do you mean, blackmailed?" Edwina asks. "Come on, you can be honest now. Tell me all that you know." She raises her right hand that has a blade attached to it. (I can't though, you couldn't.)

"I can't fight you," putting her face on isn't so hard, "I just got released from the hospital with such dreadful wounds…and wouldn't pushing myself battling an energetic young girl like you just make matters worse? That's not such a nice thing to do." Elegant face, ladylike refusal, she knows how you can go about this. (No. I'll end up doing it. Because I will not have you attacking me, and if I get back in there- I can't go back.) "Anyway. There are other things I must do." (I wonder how many like me they've killed) "So…I must use this," she takes the Stone out of her clothes, (dangerous jewel) she holds it tight in her fingers, feeling the heat of its touch course inside her, she puts it to her mouth she can know it, she outstretches her arms and the Stone is burning.

"You can't be serious," Edwina deadpans, flinging her arm out as if (I swear you little girl if you even try to take this from me I will go back on my word a thousand times over.) She doesn't seem like she'll let up anytime soon, (at least nobody else is watching you do this to me.)

Edwina's hands, armed with sharp metals, wave threateningly close to Kimblee's face (I hear them say how vain I am, you wicked little child.) "You truly are insane," Edwina says quietly, "that or you're not as quick as you claim to be-" her eyes settle on the Stone just for a slight moment, so slight that technically it shouldn't matter. She has another Stone, so technically, it shouldn't matter. But it does. Edwina steadies herself and drives her foot into Kimblee's hand, sending the Stone into a void.

"What have you done!" she shrieks, at this point, she isn't even thinking of what would be the best strategy, because this wasn't even meant to happen; sure, there's a way out, they'll still find out. She was given another Stone for a reason, but reasons in her world are never the right ones. She looks to her hands, they come together (make it all destroyed.)

She sees red hit the floor. Edwina's blade has slashed her palm open (you little bitch who do you think you are what am I to you people.) And she can see Edwina moving back further, not to leave, to strike harder. (any normal girl would have given up long ago.)

(you won't touch me. I'm not yours. You're not her.) "You," she seethes with an uncontrolled lividness that she can't seem to reign in. She takes her bleeding hand, her index finger pointing close to Edwina's face, and her other hand, she clasps ineffectively around Edwina's neck. "I've got her now for good! That's what you're thinking. That's how all of them think about me. I'll tell you, I've been here before. I don't enjoy it. Neither will you," her teeth grind (for every one of them who asked how I landed myself in prison, for every one of them who asked and had no way of knowing the truth if the First Lady was jealous- I have one hundred victims, _Miss Fullmetal._) "I know about revenge, too. You don't want to kill me? You just want to get me on my 's your mistake. You weren't willing. You had your chance. If you don't take your chances, _they'll take you_."

Edwina hasn't moved.

"I'll bet you didn't even consider," she can taste the acid of the Stone so strongly, "that I'd have another Stone." (if this gets out-) she takes her bleeding hand, its markings obscured by her weakness, and lets her finger knot its way into her throat, sending her into hysterical coughing, but the Stone ends up between her teeth. Thankfully, if she needed a third one- there would be unspeakable consequences (there will be.) "You are so naïve," she says, reveling in the temporary forgetting of her subjugation.

And there is destruction all around, and she'd prefer to never see Edwina's face again, but for now she'll just ignore the fact that she's on her second stone (lifelines aren't free. Not for you.) She slides the Stone into hiding, she's safe with it.

_(I'll be your home and shelter and prison)_

_Xx_

She is carrying part of Alice on her back, and if she had nobody, how would she be living now? It's an unreasonable thought, she knows, but all of hers can be. Reason is gone from her. It never stays long. She can't keep what is necessary, so she keeps what is near. Alice, she figures, must sometimes have to do some of the same, at least when Edwina is gone. "What's going on?" Alice's voice suddenly rings. (I should not have been carrying your voice) she looks straight forward for reasons she doesn't want to think about.

"Alice! That's such a relief. I was wondering if…when you would wake up," Winston corrects himself.

"What do you mean?" Alice says. (I'm going to have to say it. Nobody else should.)

"You suddenly fainted. None of us could carry all of you, so we had to take you apart to help you," she says, making sure to keep walking at the exact pace she would have if she could. Suspicions have their places, and she thinks for a moment what that means for Alice, then, if all there is of her is a soul. What is death to her? But she's known death before, and she's more than conscious.

She wonders now where her own mind would go without a soul. If it isn't already gone, or about to leave. She almost doesn't notice everyone else moving aside to a nearby abandoned building (as they all are here.)

(not time to think about yourself, she thinks. Shouldn't it be obvious now? But it isn't. Not all of it.)

_Xx_

She can hear the ice winds screaming, it's true, she can hear them, feel them, as if they don't come from anywhere detectable.

For a moment, she can hear them screaming a name- one that was hers once, as if to say can you hear me come back, but there are reasons why, her eyes widen, most likely a response to the cold.

High Priestess with no heaven to call to, are you? You don't know what you can't find. You can't look, but hell only knows what you can see.


	23. The King of Swords

_Supremacy. Sanctions taken by force can only be controlled by force…alteration of events by force, threat of conflict... Matters are only settled by war._

Obviously, Major General Armstrong is in on this hidden war now, too, Rochelle thinks. He wouldn't come to Central unless he had a reason, and she thinks the time must be coming, and coming quick- but it has been. And there's not a thing she can do about it except prepare and wait. She's patient though, but she doesn't know what to be waiting for. (It's driven more powerful alchemists mad, things like this- no. stop. She knows.)

"Major General Armstrong," she notices him walking down the hall.

"I never expected to see a soldier like you working up in Central," he pauses from whatever business he's involved in. "How exactly did you get chosen to work here?" (she thinks that he seems to be asking more about the ways of the higher ranks than of her tactics.)

Her face lets itself crookedly smile. "My special skills," she says, "after all. I am the Flame Alchemist." (sure she knows she's here for a reason and she's got to help her men but there's a fine line between her and her title's real meaning.) "So," she steers away that topic, "what brings you to Central, Major General?"

"The Fuhrer summoned me. It will be most likely a long time before I'm allowed to return North," he says, "you know how it is these days."

She doesn't answer but she knows what he means. She doesn't need to answer anyway. "While you're around, we could have dinner sometime," she tells him.

"That's a nice offer," he says, "we'll see about it." (they'll catch on in a public place. Even if you hide in the open.)

"I can work something out…there are some things we must talk about," she says. It may not look the right way, but she knows what she's really doing and nobody else can.

_Xx_

While Winston is at Alice's side and while the gray sun seems as thin as a reflection, May seems to have found an idea buried in the desert long ago, crushed under the weight of remnants of time. She takes the notes in her small, quick hands, and she grips the string and tears the pages from the bindings. White rectangles with swirling ink delicately fight each other to the ground.

(what was that meant to do? what kind of an idea have you found?) but she doesn't speak. There's surprise, but she hasn't spoken often anyway, and she realizes that someone as knowledgeable as May when it comes to the history and technicalities of this alchemy (it even feels detached from her, not the arm, the word) would be able to deconstruct these mysteries better than she could herself. (all I know is, whatever you're planning- I just hope it works.) There has to have been a reason. (she realizes that in a way she has more trust in May's capabilities than in her own.)

"What was that for!" Marcoh says. (but I've got nothing to say right now, she thinks, I just need to wait for it to come together. It's got to. It's got to, even though she has no reason for hope, even though she's not sure what to look for-something. There has to be something. Most likely there isn't.)

"Many parts of the notes mention gold and immortality," May says, "I figured if we took the notes apart and put the pages that have the phrases so that they correspond, we'd somehow find a link." (of course, it comes to her, you've always linked it all.) She watches intently as May places the notes together (nobody else has touched them like that.)

It wasn't supposed to happen like this, these notes weren't even supposed to matter- but they did and they built off themselves and one day they had to be hidden and she shouldn't have just lain there as her sister died- those times are gone. No. She can't think about that- but she is. She never stopped. None of this should be happening, but all she can do is watch. See what happens.

"Maybe," May says, looking at the papers, "they connect like this- oh," she notices Marcoh looking down.

"This is the national transmutation circle I told you about," Marcoh says, "it's…completely useless."

(how? Well doesn't this make sense, all that comes from your work had already been found, all the time you spent defying law and society had to pass by and you never got further than I did.) If it's true, she could just leave. She has nowhere to leave for, but she's had to leave before- she can't look away, though. She never can.

Yoki suddenly bends over, coughing- he's more affected by the weather than any of them (even me- I guess I could get used to anything if I had to); the notes scatter. (just as well, send them away, they're not anyone's anymore, they're dead, let them go higher-) "what's your problem!" one of the chimeras yells (she hasn't asked his name, not either of their names- it wouldn't be a good idea, and she still doesn't know how much she can trust them.) "What if there was something there?" What if? Where? She doesn't know.

"This just went from bad to even worse," Alice says (you had high expectations, though. You can't. What were you expecting? What am I expecting anymore?)

"I think we should start over," May says, pausing to examine the altered placement of the notes.

"Wait! Everyone!" Alice begins as if she's just discovered the thoughts of an unknown time. "We have to turn it all over so that it's the same placement, but upside down.

She looks at May briefly, not knowing what to search for in her face, not knowing what to want- so she just waits for a reaction. "What's going on?" she hears, but she has no idea- this has to contain a greater meaning, the type to tear the center from the earth, collide it with the sun and moon, tell her stories that could come true if she paid with a soul that she must have lost long ago-

May's turned her head. "This…it's a new Amestrian national transmutation circle that's activated by the purification arts," she says. (you're- you're testing it?) she doesn't know what's going on. It can't be good news, alchemy, whether or not it's _purified_, whether or not it involves her blood never is. It's the business of her blood.

She can hear a breaking, rumbling sound from far away, a tremendous shattering. She's heard worse. She's already trapped in the unknown, and she knows it doesn't get better.

_Xx_

This is the type of place that people like Kimblee get torn apart in, but she's been in places like this before. She drags her tongue furiously along the gash in her palm that does not cease bleeding, red stained all over her hands- it must have rubbed off onto her clothes, war and desire, but it's too dark for her to see.

She can't sense anyone around. And for a moment she even considers leaving, just turning around (but where do you have to go in this world? Where can you always have a place? Where you must stay.) And she does. She does what she must and what she can't bring herself not to.

On one of the walls in the underground tunnel, there's a deep red X in some kind of spray paint (not in this light, it isn't paint) across a half- built doorway. She considers blowing through it, just seeing what's there, what's on the other side- if she did, it would fall to pieces, collapse on her, collapse her, but it could happen anyway. A bar, as if it's an old road, stands between her and the X. She thinks for a moment if once, people walked this road, drove free- what had happened to it, or if it had been made for this purpose. But this isn't the time to think about that, as she walks around the bar.

X looms over her, _come to me what if you never came back I see you don't come back from where you go_, the red paint close up is cracked and hardened almost to the point that it's embedded in the wooden walls. Its color in the dim light blots into the lantern she holds- that's no beacon now, crimson lotus, crimson lantern, light of sin and hell, light from here isn't from a whole sun- but she still opens the door. She has to.

(_Oh, this must be where they keep the remnants of Sloth's tunnel_- but she doesn't think about him for too long.) She can feel it. She's always known the best and worst feelings, and among the worst is the feeling of eyes on her- she's never liked it, she likes the attention, but the feeling of being examined has always been just a bit too much for her to take. Even pain can be controlled. And she feels it searing into her, burning frigidity grasping over her- eyes. It sees her, it tastes her, it has her- she knows. "Crimson Lotus Alchemist," the voice asks but it knows her, it's probably been watching since she first came in. "How nice to meet with you. I am Pride." (nice to meet me? You're just like the rest of them to me) and the worst part is, she knows it's all real, the eyes and teeth leering around her, the realization that it hasn't ended, she has to remember. She can feel it hissing, coming closer to her. She can't tell it to leave or stay away and she can't run- she can't run from anything. None of it ever leaves. (you wanted feeling, you have it! And they all say humans are weak, and they're- I can't prove them wrong.)

"What do you want from me?" she manages to say, just loud enough so she can hear the almost absent slurring in her voice. It sounds almost as if it's laughing, but she knows it's laughing at her. (I hate so much to be looked down upon, she can't say, she doesn't have anywhere to put hate.)

"Tell me how things are going with Scar," it grins against her, (they've told you, haven't they?) she wants to destroy the both of them, they both know how it's going and he's just asking to keep the places the same.

"I'm still looking," she says in the shadows belonging to the lost world and she's already seen, "if I can't escape from her then she can't escape from me-" she sees the shadows on her, she wants to tear them from the edges of her body, strangle her with them.

"She can wait," Pride says, "but do you know what can't?" he doesn't wait for an answer. "you're to carve the crest of blood into Ft. Briggs," he seethes in pleasure. She grits her teeth and inhales, tries not to react, tries not to shiver as the tense air clots with shadows, tries not to recoil as it scrapes against her skin-

"Please take no offense to this," she begins, "but the Briggs forces are much more organized and stronger than they seem. It…" she lowers her head (they want me to fail.) "would be difficult…"

"Take their organization and strength and use it against them," he says (it's been used against me before I suppose, I'd like them to be so much lower…) she must, she needs to bend their perceived superiority, because if she can't be higher than she'll make them all lower, it's too late for her to win but if she can put off what she knows has to come then- what's there to fear now? She can't answer. She never forgets. She always remembers what's happened, knows what has to. What else do you have to do?

She knows, and she can taste the acidic twisting in her chest as she rises, plastering conviction across her face. She must. She'll keep in mind what she has to do. She can't stop.

_Xx_

It had to happen sooner or later, Miles figures. Drachma's been waiting for years, it must be, and it only makes sense that their invasion would occur just now. But Miles doesn't regret coming to Briggs, even when she's tempted to leave (she knows her other options.) She figures that Drachma's authoritative regime can't even match up to the Major General's command, but he's not here. (She's killed Drachmans before, but she hasn't fought off the whole country.)

She looks closer down to the advancing Drachmans, led by a commander and- _of course_. (you would, wouldn't you?) "Now she's done it," she says, calm as she isn't, to Buccanneer. "using the Drachmans to turn the land red."

"Strange it is, considering how Drachma knows better than anyone that Briggs is completely impenetrable," Buccanneer replies, glaring at the incoming Drachmans.

"Not when Major General Armstrong is gone," Miles immediately replies and she thinks inadvertently- there are reasons, all tied together, but for now they're all tangled.

_Xx_

"Thank you," she tells the old man in the Ishvalan slum (she wonders how they all managed to end up in Briggs, but she doesn't ask.)

"Don't worry about it. You're Ishvalan as we are," he says (obviously, then, you have no idea who I am) and she wonders what life would be like if nobody else did either- she still would. And it's always going to be real, even if her reality doesn't exist for anyone else. She won't endanger the others further right now, but they're already in trouble by traveling with her. She'll never turn her eyes completely away from vengeance's world, or her world, if there's a line. (Ishval, despite what you seem to think, isn't my home anymore.)

She doesn't like this direction that the path is taking her, but she's always accepted having nowhere else to go.


	24. The Queen of Clubs

**This one was hard to write. :p **

Even though she's looking only from far away, the Ishvalan companion with the chimera (his name is apparently Zanpano) seems, in a way, wrong. He says he's come to see the doctor- few others have come, though. Whatever he knows, she doesn't want to find out, so she stays away as she avoids most people.

He unveils his face partially (she remembers walking the streets of Central, staring out from folds of cloth knowing that nobody could ever uncover her words which must never be said, wondering what his story is, thinking of how she walks these lands of ice with her face and self obscured and wanting to never stop, not wanting to see herself, wanting nobody to see no matter how hard they looked. She tenses at the false-looking grin plastered across his face. "No, Zanpano, you should stop now," he says, (I knew it, you've been working with others, I knew I shouldn't have even spoken with you I shouldn't have left my vengeance- this is what I get.) "It's been such a long while, Doctor. Nice face…you're sure getting old," he says. And for a second it seems like his face is _melting,_ lighter and lighter he turns, but he's still there and his face has changed, transforming himself- he's got to be one of them. "You really are weak. You couldn't hide from us-" but he stops. And she can't turn her eyes away, it almost keeps her entranced, the way this happens, the way these unnatural occurrences always happen around her.

The snow seems to violently rise as he walks over it, thrashing him into the air. "What the hell is this!" he screams, and she knows what it must be, but she's had that question in her mind for much longer than she knows anyone else would, long enough to know that it cannot be asked. "Zanpano, what did you do?" she doesn't say a word as she watches, it would take too long to decide what she could possibly say anyway. She knows what to involve herself in, even when she goes all the wrong places. This wasn't what she needed (what do you need?)

"I fooled you, didn't I? Third rate acting," Zanpano says, but he learned from watching, even if he didn't know when the act began and reality ended.

"We're luring you…Envy," Marcoh says (you are- that creature from underground who started the war oh my God, you're back, why am I here?) "We knew you were ruthless. But we're more than we seem."

"How does this alchemy exist!" Envy screams again in shock (I didn't know either. Some things we can't know, some things we shouldn't know.)

"Well," Marcoh begins, "I guess I didn't mention how these lands mines are only meant to react to you homunculi. You can't see them because of the snow, but they're there. They're all there. How do you like this?" and she knows he doesn't, not at all, Marcoh is watching a fire build and there's nothing anyone will to stop. Not that she would- she can fend trouble off, but she's never been able to prevent it.

Envy rises from the ground, slowly growing in size and height- "you scum should have just done what you were told!" (scum? We don't do what we're told. That's how you stay scum. I became what I am because I did what I must.) All she knows is right now, she must stay, it is now that creature she had come across underground again, (you started the war, you helped start me) and she continues the war and she's never going to end it and she has to just keep going, it's all she'll ever have of a home. "You haven't won yet!"

"This is insane!" Zanpano yells, and it is, but she's seen insanity, and it isn't an opponent, it makes itself irremovable, and she clenches her teeth and she knows how to live in madness, barely letting herself feel as the cold licks her when she rolls her sleeve up.

"Is that the best you can do?" Envy calls. She can do worse. She has to, she is the remainder and he's the producer, and she bows her head. She's coming. She's still here, still gone.

_Xx_

There is smoke tearing through the air. It obstructs Kimblee's breathing, but she barely notices, it doesn't make so much of a difference anymore. She half-closes her eyes, giving into the surrounding destruction. The landscape is ravaged, masked in white, twisted, harsh purity. She drags her nails across the cannon that she's resting on. "Well done, well done. This is what most would call an instant victory…" she feels lightheaded enough to disintegrate, soar away in pieces over the mountains, euphoric agony. "I really did think that we'd be able to do this better. But I suppose I invested too much trust in Drachma's strength…all too much trust…" (_I really should stop expecting so much_, she knows, but can't bring herself to admit what she can't do.)

"You lied to us," the Drachman general reprimands. Of course she did.

"You're right. But how could I have known that they could overpower us if I hadn't been informed of their forces?" she breathes, barely even looking at him. (none of them would tell me, but I don't care for anyone who'd set me up for failure.)

"That isn't what I'm saying!" and she knows it. It's as if they want to all bring her down, as if she deserves it more than they do, as if she's there to serve as a warning. "We've been planning this attack for years. They and you promised us that this could work, and it didn't." She really should care. Most nations are all the same. "Look what came from it!" as if she can't see. They're not really looking, she knows better than they do-

"Don't be so upset with me. You and I both survived such a terrible attack," (she can barely say defeat, and anyway, if she did it would only make matters worse). "Fate chose us." She was already chosen.

"Why don't you just shut up and leave, you-" but she never finds out what she was going to be called this time, not as his blood spatters over her and she covers her face with her hands, swaying as the explosion batters the ground and casts it shadows of rage into her. They're all like this, the women are more direct and the men are less concealed, but all of them bring out reactions in her- and she's making herself calm down if it's the last act she'll do.

There's a gun against her head. Of course. "You're going to have to come with us, Miss," says a Drachman, (I'm not_ your _prisoner) but she reaches her hand underneath her clothes, pushing against her chest, and places the other hand to her mouth- the red stone heaves itself between her teeth. She feels even more lightheaded, as if she could fall down further and further until she melted like snow, and she feels nauseous.

As the land around her ruptures, covering everyone, covering her, she steadies herself against the cannon laying on the ground- needing to get out, needing to regain composure she can't find anymore- her head goes foreword down, along with the rest of her, but the cannon is still there and she doesn't fall completely down. She rubs snow from her eyes, but there's still heat in her.

There's an avalanche. She'll get back to her feet and this will be one of her many secrets and she feels the ground shake and it's almost too much. She never really gets back to her feet, but she will. Sometime. It has to happen. It all has to happen.

She needs to make it happen. She never has.

_Xx_

She knows she's just walked onto his back, more instinctual than fearless- she doesn't fear death, she knows where she'll go from there. "What about this?" for all the hate and confusion screaming at her in her mind, not letting go (KILL HIM you can't you couldn't stop any of them and now you're not even letting yourself be capable of destruction), it seems to all cancel itself out and she's left with a blank, flat tone in her voice that she can barely hear over Envy's screams of searing pain and shock. It doesn't match her face. She plunges her hand deep into the ground, she's jumping off his back, landing into the ground but she doesn't care. It's decomposing, Envy, but she knows it's not going to be that simple. (do you even feel it once it ends?)

It rises again. It doesn't even seem to see her or care- why? She understands. It never set out for her, she never set out for it or him. They're indirectly connected. She has more connections than she's ever tried to make, though, and more than she needs to think about. Envy, she decides, isn't hers to avenge- their kind, from what she knows, are further from those matters.

It opens its mouth and a twisting mass unfurls like some kind of tongue- her eyes widen in horror, in expectation, she's got to keep aware of the unknown. The white rope from its mouth wraps itself around Marcoh. "I have you!" it growls, "I'm going to teach you pathetic humans a lesson." It straightens itself out. "I told you that if you did anything, made one move, I'd have to destroy the village."

"I'm not going to let you," Marcoh says (_don't- it's not about letting them_, even though _that's just what I did who are you avenging now NO I already did)_. "I did so many terrible things when I made that stone. I hate myself for it…I should never have done it." (why now?)

"I could obliterate that entire Ishvalan slum over there," Envy suggests, "if you keep this meaningless talking." (was that towards me, too?) "But I could take the healthier women and children back to Central to make another Stone…" (don't go near me I may be everyone's but that means I'm also nobody's) (don't touch my people no matter how many times you try and touch me, haven't you had enough?)

"You can't still be making those things?" Marcoh says, (they are, I know they are, they're doing worse-) "I'm asking you, Envy, please free the researchers."

"I can't," the creature grins, "they're in the Stone. Just like you did once. You took their lives and used them for your plans..." (she almost doesn't want to listen, but she knows what happened. Once was enough. But she can't feel this now- she's got to stay. She closes her eyes and doesn't like what she sees, but it's better. Not by much. It doesn't matter, she knows.)

"I did. And I'm an expert on it. And since I'm an expert on creating wrongs…I can destroy them!" (_then why can't I if that's true, it can't be) _but she watches as Marcoh's hands drive themselves into the back of Envy's throat, as Envy's back curls and arches, as it shrinks and crackles and screams so loud she can feel the sound in her. It's back in its form that looked like a person, but it's weakened grotesquely.

She almost wants to see the Stone destroyed again, but she can't forget it, anyway. She has to remember so she can remind herself why she's on this path. Whatever will happen, she can't run from it, and she never expected to.

"How can this be!" Envy rasps. "You damn humans, and you traitor chimera! I can't be here, attacked by all you…stop…" he's literally falling apart, he can barely speak not because of metal distractions but because his body is deteriorating and changing once again, into the ground- "you're all looking down on me!" it screams, and it falls finally.

Her closed mouth twists in loathing and horror. It remains alive, but right by her feet. "Don't look at me!" it commands, and she's felt that voice in her before, but she doesn't listen. It's too late to look away. She steps back, keeping her distance. After all, even in this form, few people are as they seem and she can't take every risk, only the ones she needs to, the ones that are too dangerous to avoid. "This little thing," she quietly observes, "has been causing so much trouble?" She stares at it for a few moments, sees its eye boring into her (what are you looking at, she can almost hear it think, as if you've never been where I've been as if you're so different) no. It's not saying that to her, it didn't need to. She picks it up in her hand, noticing how it doesn't even try and resist.

"We've won," she says, at least, for now. Envy doesn't respond. (why was that your name? she wonders, knowing people can choose new names or identities but mostly people are chosen by them, and she has no reason to envy. Well, she has no place for it. She can't go back to purity or regularity, when back then she barely even had it. She casts it away, drawing in her sins, all she'll ever know, all she has to manage.)

She realizes she never had wanted vengeance on Envy. (she closes her eyes as she remembers being underground, knowing the possibilities that she'd just go deeper into the shaft and strengthen her fate of weakness, she's always been going down.) Even though anyone else would find it to be more logical, but there is no logic, there is no rhyme or reason, and all she knows is that if she doesn't stop this staying soon, the path will crack underneath her and swallow her, even though that may have already happened. (_I can't be doing this now, _but she is,_ I don't even know what can happen and that's the worst of it all, but it doesn't matter anymore. _) She can't let anyone know- if she does, she'll know for certain that there will be no end.

She presses her mouth into a thin line, her eyes cast down, and she wonders if she could envy first and last, and she knows she is already beyond thinking of sin. It's there for real now, and she'll never get it out, and it will take her mind next- but it doesn't matter whether or not she allows it to happen. She has no say.


	25. The Knave of Swords

"So this is what a homunculus looks like," Yoki leans forward to examine Envy (they don't look just one way, she knows, their names are there for a reason.) "That's what you get for trying to fight us humans," and she knows that Yoki in a way is right- _humanity_ is uncontrolled energy endangering all that happens to exist in its path, she knows from experience. "He's a little worm, isn't he?" Well, she's not sure whether or not he's even a he, or a she- or if the current form should be given a name as typical as 'worm', but she just nods her head. (She wonders if Envy sees itself as he or she or neither or both, or if it's beyond those.)

Yoki's finger moves in to touch Envy (I don't think that just because nobody told you not to touch him, it's still a good idea, she thinks, never prepared for these turns that always come for her.) She can feel it squirming between her fingers, it flies away before she can grip it tighter (she can't ever even think of letting go because it always comes back for her. You know what I mean. She does.)

"You!" it says, ignoring her or maybe just having no business with her (one country must mean nothing to you, she wonders how that would feel) and it clamps its mouth around Yoki's finger, driving its teeth in, writhing its cavernous mouth. It doesn't take much time before Yoki stops struggling and falls to the ground. (whatever it's doing…she thinks but doesn't even want to know how it works.)

Yoki's head slowly rises from its burial spot in the somehow clean snow. "Help!" he calls but she just watches as (asking for help will just bring their desire to harm more.) If it was her, she could destroy Envy, maybe not once and for all- she doesn't know if she's ever gotten rid of any problem she's needed gone. People, yes, men and women of sinful service await the hypothetical day she'd come for them, fear and hatred and desire, conflicting reasons, and she knows the damage is already done.

"This human's body is mine!" Envy's voice twists unnaturally, (she's felt it, she's felt it vengeance taking her she becomes it no she becomes her, and she doesn't resist doesn't need to can't resist because it is her)

The creature is rooted in Yoki's neck, trailing its strands of flesh under his skin. She can almost feel it (better that than the things she thinks.) "And if you don't all follow my orders, I'll kill him!" Yoki's body pulls upwards mechanically, his hands at almost-symmetrical, forced positions.

"My body isn't doing what I tell it to!" Yoki panics, "this is violating!" and all her eyes do is widen as she stares. (_mine hasn't always obeyed me but I made it obey me,_ and by that point, it was unclear who was in charge _don't think of that this is different _is it?) (violating? I'm sure you know a thing or two about that, scorpion, you had to get your poison somehow _stop this is not the time to think about this it never is_)

"Your life is up to me," Envy says, she knows it isn't saying it to Yoki but to everyone, even her- but she has less to lose than he (he? Why am I thinking that, now?) thinks, most likely. (Envy the Homunculus, though, in a way has far less to lose than he'd like to think.) And what does she have to lose, she distances herself from her mind. (my life is in your hands, my death was always in my arm.)

"All right," Jerso (the other one- she still doesn't completely trust either of them. She knows she's not ready to trust most people, but she sees more reasons to not trust them.)

"It's not as if he's got connections to us anyway," Zampano says, no tone reflecting any motives (you've got no emotions shown- that will just strengthen your chances) , but she can't tell whether or not he's still acting. It's more likely that he is, though, and she'd rather have no involvement, but she'll go along with this _show _as long as it has a controllable end. (she's been _shown _before, she can show the truth in its form that nobody wants to see- but this is a different show. Make your own world, truth, identity, life, see what could be_- and, if you ask me, what should never be_.)

"Are you serious!" Yoki shouts.(no. But one word and Envy will know.) And she isn't in the right state for that kind of vengeful being can bring, doesn't need to be- and she never leaves her place, no matter where she goes. "Hey, Scar! You'll help, right?" but she doesn't risk misusing any words, because consequences love to hate her, and she'll just help everyone and keep herself in the same spot by turning her head away. (stop me, Envy, go ahead.) "Don't turn away!" Yoki yells to her, but he thinks somewhere in the back of his mind where he doesn't notice (this is all she's ever going to know.)

"Aren't you his friends?" Envy wonders in complete amusement, "and none of you are trying to save him? Not even you-" he doesn't clarify, doesn't look further than Yoki's head, nobody asks him who he meant but she can tell. (Why was it me?)

"Envy," Marcoh says in boredom, "we're not going to stand for your tactics. Either you stop interfering, or we'll destroy Yoki's body right along with you." Envy doesn't reply, but it tears himself off Yoki's neck, ripping out its skin gradually. (for a moment she wonders if Envy took her over, would she fight if it meant destroying her body? And would it go where she went after? And-no. No. Stop.)

She finds herself placing Envy back in its large, glass jar where no harm can be done, where nobody can touch it or stop it from planning. She realizes she can't let it out, but nobody's stopping her- they know what she's capable of, but they assume what she won't do. But she knows that never works with anyone, even her.

_Xx_

"You're right," she finds herself agreeing with Jerso, "I can't be here anymore." This place has brought her too many questions she doesn't need to wonder about, too many answers she never looked for, too many memories she didn't need to relive, too many thoughts that sent her closer and closer to an edge (thoughts that kept her frozen awake, feeling the way her body has been made by her memories, her present, her hands-) that she's already fallen off once. But she's never ran, she needed to see where she'll never go for better and worse, she could have vengeance and take it away, she burned bridges while everyone called and spoke for her but she never turned to them, she's been hated and judged and known. But she's had enough. She's been made to feel. And she doesn't have much room in her head for that anymore. (she barely knows what she'd like to do about Envy, however that managed to happen, however that flame of vengeance never got up to call her name.)

"You're leaving?" asks one of the Ishvalans. She has to. She can't stay where memories live in the present, and she's too involved now, staying with _her people _would only remind her that she has no people. She turned from them the second she woke up then. Or before.

"I must," she says, "the enemy knows we're here. It's too dangerous," she warns the man, she warns herself, because she knows that no matter who she's working with, she can't let them gain the upper hand. Her life is danger, it's a way to survive and struggle and it's always a working excuse. Nobody would think that she's in a perfect state to safe from danger, to be unbroken by fate, to know what security is.

"May Ishvala bless you," he says, "and take care of yourself." Even though only hell reaches her, Ishvala knows she is in a different place and has no name to make her close to the surface (she's too far from heaven, too far from a world that she'll never be a part of no matter how hard she looks.) They say they wish her well, but she knows where she doesn't belong. (she remembers waking up, not too long ago, how she swore to herself she'd avenge her lost life, her sister, her people_, if her life depended on it_ and their lives would depend on it- and then, she still could have turned away but never gone back, and in a way she doesn't regret vengeance. It is what she needed, needs. )

"Thank you," she's leaving, and it isn't the same direction anymore and it comes to her- if she could vanish, she would, if she could continue she would have to- but she can't. She had always known she'd be taken somewhere even she isn't meant to see, and she's accepted that. She's accepted it all. She won't let herself stop or care or feel the griding in her head as all she can hear is _may Ishvala bless you_ slurred and echoing and haunting her every step she takes closer to being in a place where she'd need it if she deserved it, if she could be saved, if she hadn't become a forsaken person.

(bless the priestess of hell, watch her run, watch her remember, watch her try and see if she's further gone than this world, all she can do is watch the past happen.)


	26. The Knight of Cups

_Frail destiny...passing destiny which must be seized...shattered, broken destiny._

This is no place for an old-ghost slattern Ishvalan criminal with too many answers and too many thoughts and not enough voids to fill, but she's never been where she's meant to be, so much that nobody is surprised to hear where she turns up. (you don't know where she's been, everywhere, anywhere, places you forgot but she remembers). But right now, even more, this isn't a path May needs to continue on. Sure, of course, May is more capable and powerful than many of those around her, at times including herself- (for all your excitability and my silence, I'll admit you've got your head where it must be more often than I do.) "May?" she asks once the two of them are out of hearing distance of the others, except Envy, who doesn't even care. But she does, too much. "What route did you enter the country through?" she tries to sound as if she's only asking for facts.

"The Youswell coal mine," May answers, (you always sound so happy). If she came all this way, then she can leave, it's not too late, she could have left and now is the best time and she's not going to watch May follow in her footsteps that fade away.

"All right," she says, having to accept anyone's fate and not alter May's but protect hers. She's silent for a moment. Let her think what she will, but May really doesn't need to deal with this, she's seen enough already. But it's the only time now, the only chance. "May," she says, "quietly gripping the glass jar so tightly she can feel its edges slice into her hands, "when you go, I don't think you'll have any problem, but I want you to take this with you." Even though it's not hers to give, but she doesn't care about following Amestris's rules, not when the people recognized within its borders don't live by them. All she cares about in this moment is ending the path Envy is walking through her mind and letting May have the chance to walk freer and stronger and less bound than she ever was meant to, if not for her clan's sake then at least (she doesn't hope for miracles, not for so many people) for herself (you deserve something better than having no family and worrying about your people's chances of survival before your own, better than risking your life for one that most people don't need to see.)

May looks up, her head shaking in incomprehension. "What?" she says as if not knowing where to begin, needing to ask a question, any question. (I know the feeling.) (she wonders what she'd do if she had to be alone with Envy. If it stayed in, stayed small, she'd just keep walking.)

"Hey, wait a minute!" Yoki says, but she gives him a look that she expects will make him understand that Envy might be important and dangerous but keeping him around isn't the best idea, no matter what the consequences may be. They could find it, and everyone else (but nobody would find May unless she stays with me.)

"It's…well, no, it's not what you needed," she says, knowing there's no point in pretending that May's ideal will ever be fulfilled. "But it might be able to work for something." She's lowered her voice enough so that only May can hear. "It may not give the emperor immortality. I can't make promises, but it hasn't died. Maybe it's enough to save your clan and help you," she tells May. "I know it's not much. But you know best for yourself. It's not really my choice if you leave but I think it would be the best choice you could make." (you're powerful but not untouchable.) She can see in her face, May doesn't _want_ to want to return home, but she still does. (it's all right. You want this and you can and should have it. It's all right to want what you can still have.) "May, you didn't come for this. You don't need to get caught up in this country. You can leave by going East." May looks to the path, but looks back remorsefully.

"It's going to be fine for you," she says, and for a moment stays silent. "Please don't worry for me," even though she knows May will anyway, "this country can work its own problems out."

She needs May to believe her, to understand that they're in two different states of being no matter how it seems to her. She can see in May's face, already missing her, but she can't help. "Thank you," May tells her, and gives words she doesn't need to say.

"I know," she says, quietly so that she can barely hear herself, "I'm grateful for you too, May."

"Thank you for everything!" May calls to everyone around, still not walking away.

"I still don't really get alkahestry…" Alice begins, "but I'm glad you taught me and that we met." She tries to maneuver her armor, but May embraces her all the same, around her iron waist.

"I am too Alice…I'll miss you," she says.

"Take care, May!" Alice calls (and I know she will. Are you telling her that because you know she's one of us who you think will go to the trouble to do so?) (I can't.) Farewell, she thinks, one of us must.

_Xx_

She doesn't know or care what time it is. It's sometime at night and sometime after even the people of the dark like her have turned themselves in to their homes, but she has none. She barely even knows where she is- not Briggs anymore. It doesn't matter.

There's a small lake nearby, and she can't tell how deep it goes or what is hidden underneath. But it shouldn't matter to her- everyone is back in the woods, asleep. They can protect themselves, most likely, as effectively without her as they can with her.

She walks to the lake, not unaware of danger but realizing that she hasn't seen signs of other people aside from her traveling companions for- she doesn't know how long. It seems like she could enter and never come out, but you know what they say, it all washes ashore. She isn't sure whether or not to believe that.

She takes her shoes off slowly, letting her feet drag against the hardened dirt until they hit the icelike water that licks her soles, foreign to its touch. (come to swim, come to rid yourself of filth and give it to me? Come to drown? Come to feel my ice in you?)

But she doesn't walk too far. It's, she decides, an idea that can bring the kinds of consequences she doesn't need to think about. She can barely feel her feet, as if she has no grounding, but that's not relevant right now. (she isn't sure what made her decide to think of cleanliness now, but she'll never be clean, not again, no matter how much she drenches herself in purity, in this depth that she can't be in.) (why are you even thinking in the first place? It's too late, you're a scar, you're never going to be healed.) she isn't sinking now, but the water seems to churn- the entire lake, from far away all the way to her. (this is a wicked place, Amestris- good for an enchantress like you) she knows she's just seen someone across the water, she knows she's just heard a wave smack as if someone had risen from its depths but not her, not her.

But it doesn't matter. She'll never be clean, never feel free, not as she lets her shaking hands feel the surface- she sees a reflection in the dark, it must be hers- but she can't bring herself to look, so she places her hands in so that she cannot see them, only where the water begins and she ends. Nobody should see her- maybe she's just been sensing it. She closes her eyes as she makes herself reach her hands over her clothes, take them off. If anyone does come, she has her arm, she has her mind- no, she has her arm.

The thick, livid water seems to drink her in as she goes deeper, as she washes her hands over her arms and back, always hidden where she doesn't look, herself, but she can't look away now- for a moment her eyes freeze as the water swirls as she sees herself, how torn her skin is (has been), how she is reflected in the lake like a feral spirit, exposed and somewhere between warped and frail, but always broken- sin's lasting remnants. Her own remnants.

She _scrapes_ closing her eyes now, and dirt disintegrates underwater and collects under her ragged fingernails and her hands tear the knots in her hair that trails under the surface and languishes plastered to her, her hands meshing over her bones, over herself so hard she feels like if she keeps up she'll be torn down once and for all, so hard she can feel her need for what she'll never try to have, inside her, all in her, ripping into her, understanding enough that she knows she knows exactly what she has and painfully enough to make her a bit less immune to herself and she knows she cannot care now, not as she feels her head tilt backwards as if to look higher or as if reacting to the lividness coursing through her thoughts and hands and arms and legs as if she's making herself feel her revolting agony being forgotten for good, but it isn't working and she knows it never really will, she inhales unsteadily as if to try and bring herself to a reality she never left, at least not now- she was never there, she was never anywhere.

She bows her head under the water, then _all _of her, as she opens her eyes and can taste its overpowering frigidity- this is not a place she knows but she feels as if she's been there (she was pure and free to drift away once, then she sank away). She knows she must carry her own guilt as her unearthly fluidity rushes through her senses, makes her open her mouth and lower her eyelids no, remain in control and she does not drown in herself, drown in rigid hatred inside her for her from her- she is ruled by sin she is ruled by her path of filth and not always by herself and nobody owns her but the imaginations of those who know of her, and she is everyone's and no one's in all senses, and she maybe in some way can be her own but now she's not even belonging to this water, not this place that lets her stay but watches not-so-silently as she struggles. She can feel the slight waves roll on her, like soft and powerful hands of ownership, like silhouettes of the people she never left, the people she never knew, the selves she's never let out- everyone's spirits including her own- (feel me you whore you scarred remainder feel you you've gone away and drowned you sunk away you whore)

Almost by a horrified instinct she opens her eyes. Across the distance, not far away, is a figure (it's her she looks like me) she raises her head, just as the other does, a shadowlike reflection telling her what she could have so easily misunderstood.

The soldier, not far, opens her mouth. "You didn't quite make it. But you're still standing," Her right arm reaches out, but whether or not for a challenge or invitation, she isn't sure, it isn't said.

"tell me," she says quietly, and automatically thinks she couldn't have said it but must have just thought it- she doesn't move. She can feel her mind behind the scar sharply twist.

"I can't. You already know some. And you had to learn some, and maybe some, you'll never really be meant to know." Her face mourns, hates, observes, has no age or time, has always looked like this- she has no scars, but the same face. Worn enough to be a scar. (not unlike you my sister) "My sister, tell me where you are."

(what? I cannot do that wouldn't you already know about it but obviously you mean something else in another way)

"I see," the soldier accepts, "maybe you're not supposed to be here. But you ended up here anyway. It's no surprise." Her hand moves itself under the water, violent and swift, and she looks right at her. "This war's not going to end, not ever, but you know that. You must keep to it."

"Who are you?" she says, but already has an idea. As much of an idea as she can. There may not be an exact answer, she is used to that. And she finds herself sinking without time, and she is under the water as if she's been like this and she sees her own reflection above and she forces herself higher and the reflection is _her_ that she avenged worse than anyone else even herself, spilling blood from her mouth as she mouths moans of pleasure and pain and calls for help, and the reflection shatters and fades into the soldier beckoning and into her own again and she tears into it as if it can destroy what has always been and what never will be, but she isn't trying for that, (feel me you are me you are gone but can't care, she still feels how her hands scraped knowledge and pain and failed purity but she doesn't mind. She is raw and tainted and aware for battle and seething after its touch) , that never leaves.

The towers have fallen and the crowns are meaningless, she must fight- even herself.


	27. VII of Clubs

_Violent break, conflict because its balance seems to be upset by an event which abruptly breaks it…all whose nature it is to disrupt matter or sensation._

She shouldn't be drinking, not now, at least. She doesn't care to, anyway- there are more controllable spirals to slide down, ones that don't promise peace and forgetting. So she just keeps by Marcoh (she still doesn't think she's a doctor, even if she doesn't want to at the center of the town, surrounded by people eating and drinking and talking- except her. Fabric barricades her face, all of her, just as she needs it, and her neck bends down to shield her face from anyone (enemy, bystander, all the same, they're all capable of seeing her, letting themselves in long after she stopped trying to figure out where her weak spots were most noticeable.

"where have you been?" Jerso and Zampano enter the enclosure, and she wonders if their loud questioning will draw attention- but then again, she's probably drawing attention by now, anyway. She hasn't seen any headlines lately, but she knows that someone, more than one person, has got to be looking for her, not including the entire military and police. And if she is found, she doesn't know who would find her. "We can't waste any more time. She thinks to ask where they had been before, who they had seen or talked to that made them decide they had to leave- but it's the right time, and she doesn't question that truth. "We have to go to Central to meet the Elric girls' father. I'll explain later," Jerso says under his breath, not making eye contact, making it seem like he isn't even talking-(them? Why them? What could they possibly want this time?) But it's their father, and she's still not sure how he'd be relevant. (and oh God, what am I doing, going back to Central?) Central is her place of original vengeance, she once hid in the open, she hated and needed them- she needs to be there. But why, she supposes, isn't her concern. Not anymore.

_Xx_

"it's strange when you think about it," (of course it is that's why you don't think about it), "there's an Ishvalan woman," (I know, but why is that never seeming to me like the right words?) "and some former Amestrian soldiers," (is that how it is for you? Once you leave, you stop being a soldier? She doesn't suppose she'll understand, the Amestrian warmen who say they've stopped even though she never has. But she knows they fight in different worlds) "coming together to fight for the same country." Standing by what they know long after it all went wrong.

"If we stick by a powerful alchemist such as Marcoh we might have a better chance of getting back to normal. So it's not so impersonal …" she's walking ahead of them and not looking back, not trying to figure out what they're looking at. "But we're with Scar and she's the most wanted criminal in the country and has been for years. And she still wants to save it." Obviously they'll never really know, and she can tell their words bear no hate, no desire, only observations from their point of view that she'll never see from. She's not even sure why she's bothering. Her arm leads her.

"Some things you can't save," or shouldn't save, "this country needs to be changed while it still can be." She can't do it on her own, of course. Who can? There are others, and there always will be, people to stand by her side until it's their turn to win and hers to fade into white. "Most of my people during the war died, and this country needs to realize their existences."

They've come to the hill. She knows which one, yet another slum that's either ignored or not known by Central (she'd intentionally locate it far away, too.) "In order to bring change to the world, you must bring change to yourself," the man at the top of the hill says, leading a group of Ishvalans behind him. She wonders how many had been rebels before the war, if she hadn't become who she was- would she have been up there? She knows she's changed since before then, if she had just lain down would she still be standing? Being on a twisted path doesn't mean she's a new person. She's always been there. And he may be right, but she's never changed the world; she's brought fear and she's one of the war's many faces, but as long as her face has the scar she'll always be vengeance and transferred suffering.

She doesn't answer him, only turns away to look at her companions. As much as she knows that they'll use all they can to take down the disease seizing the country, a part of her remembers the days of the war, the days of rebellions and people with not nearly as much experience or power or knowledge as the invaders, the days when she still stood almost but not quite at the edge and she didn't want to have to claw back. But it's too late for that- she's already a casualty, and if she has to be again, then it's no surprise- but she _knows_, all else to come may as well be.

_Xx_

Kimblee can hear music, cold and from far away, entrancing and seducing her and passively forcing itself into her. Songs of war, songs of fatal desire, melding into one another and banging notes all over her body. She can hear pieces of metal from the old, half-demolished building creak off their hinges, she can hear the clicking of her pinpoint heels of her shoes mark the floor in irregular time. There's blood on the hem of her clothes, again- glaringly noticeable once you see it. She can only try at this point not to think of what's noticeable.

"I should stop being such a workaholic," she says, nobody around who can hear the acidic edge in her voice as her words halt and quicken inconsistently, her intonation a reversed sigh of pleasure. She really does need to (for a long time before she had heard them but they had different reasons for telling her she had no place here, she had heard them telling her to take a break because they feared her later, and as time passed it became too late.)

She's tried, but this is just how she is and she's not going to be able to stop herself.

For a moment, she remembers being in the ruined building with Pride, she remembers the unused doorway with the X scarred over its frame. It's not here, it may as well be, though, what with all the blood smeared over the walls (she leaves some for the surroundings and some to linger on her as if she needs a reminder, an enforcement of what she practiced before she knew what remembering can do), the walls that she almost falls into as she realizes she isn't paying attention to where her feet are taking her, before she realizes in mild horror that she barely knows where she is.

But she remembers- she remembers in the war, she'd get so high that blood would cover her whole body, and she'd revel on the ground in prison feeling herself red and raw until she could practically see the Stone beneath her closed eyelids- but now, when she gets lost, she doesn't know where she'll end up. (can you keep a secret?) she almost gleefully asks the remains of one man, who will never tell what he's seen. She's kept secrets- the military's, the homunculi's, Scar's, her own- and she has to remember because she can't just twist her own beliefs even if they're already twisting her and she has to remember anyway since the memories never left her present, they just didn't show up- or? She can't say. No. "After all, the main event is yet to begin," the show must go on, as long as the stage is still standing so can she.

She can almost feel the stone inside her as she turns to another side of the wall as if to hide, as she thrusts her finger into her mouth to catch the Stone that she slowly and painfully can feel dragging itself out of her, as she convulses and racks the red obscenity into her hand, as she swoons in illness and nearly chokes as red-tinged vomit seeps out of her throat. (who did this?) (she can't stand it.) (No matter what I do you'll never be out of me if I can't escape you and you can't escape me then who's going to be the last one standing it's not going to be you it can't be you it can't be me no matter what part of me I destroy no matter what part of you fails)

She can see old, faded enlistment posters on the wall (this building was owned by the military, just like everything else…) She sees names, some she knows, some she doesn't. And her eyes rest on one. _Sister-Women! Join Us Up Front! _She knows the faces. The Nurse in faded color gazes from the wall, one hand on a fallen comrade and the other raised to the Amestrian skies of smoke and fire as if demanding calmness. And for a minute as she feels even more ill, she can feel her palms rage in heated loss the way her throat sizzles and the way she knows who's almost felt it before. No healing, only deconstruction- all she knows.

(it's almost painful watching how pathetic you are) nurturing, calm and so harsh, her own bent full-circle words taunting her as she plasters a false grin over her face that she knows is positioned grotesquely enough to pass as her usual plain sadism rather than the whole truth but she doesn't give the whole truth anyway. She can pretend not to feel her in her mind, tearing her face, burning her arms, slamming her against the wall and asking if she's so sure she doesn't pray, forcing her to feel all that she had thought she had rid herself of- the Stone is in her hand, but it can easily become hidden once again. Just as she can force it back out, just as she forces herself. She can almost hear the coldly reassuring laughter murmuring into her face. (where would you be without this show you put on? Where would you be without her?)

But she has to stand up, move continuously, ignore what's inside before the show goes on with her, because all else has. She walks to where she suspects the exit is, pretending that she knows for sure if the blood on her hands is or isn't her own, pretending she didn't just hit the wall and turn away, pretending that the further forward she moves the deeper she hasn't lost herself in vengeance, pretending she doesn't need to remember again.

But she sees the floors, how there are rats to the side and she sees just one small scorpion on the wall.

She knows the truth, once you see it you can't pretend forever and you never really can again.

(Enchantress,) she thinks (you didn't break the chain and even you couldn't break this spell.)


	28. The Knave of Pentacles

_Material work to ensure existence…tentative advice…_

It's almost aimless, this web they're traveling in- it's got so many directions that she sees them all as the same. She knows she's got to be the only one to see it like that, though, she can tell she's obviously far from everyone else- but she still walks ahead. They've reached another slum, inhabited by Amestrians. (these people are probably not the kind who'd know much about Central's inner workings, the kind who go ignored- seeing is proof. They're no better off than the Ishvalan slums. A part of her has known for a long time that some misfortunes take everyone as a victim, no matter their race.)

"Hey, it's you again! Long time no see," says one of the men there to her. (how long has it been? She can't say, doesn't know time normally. She knows what she can't bring into her life.)

"We were wondering if the military had captured you," says the other man, only to receive a look from his friend that seems to mean 'you shouldn't have said that out loud.' She bites the inside of her lips at the sentence, but she's been thinking about being captured since the war. She's heard stories of what's happened to people- but it _never _happened to her, (_that _was never branded on her she knows what happens even though the rumors said it did, the rumors from Amestris- she was attacked. Just attacked. _Just _attacked?)

"…I'm looking for the Kanama district. Can you help?" she asks, trying to think about a less personal area.

"Okay," one man says, "it's out of the way- in the south of Central. By the woods. By the way, how's the girl with the cat doing?"

"We saw her a while ago, alone. None of you know?" another man says, after the silence.

"What?" is all she says (is that all you know how to say in times like this?) bur she's just trying to figure it all out right now. Trying. (What is May doing back here and why? She's not mad. What could she possible have to gain?) She can feel her mouth twist.

"What the hell is she doing back here?" Jerso says, and it's what she's thinking. She's not sure, though, if he's thinking aloud or expecting her to have an answer. But nobody else has one, and as everyone else talks around her, she wonders how much is still hidden, and she thinks it's got to be most of it. (she must not have been supposed to know about that circle…)

"Have you heard? President Bradley died in the east," one of the men says (_what? He can't have, unless those beings are controlling him-_ if you only knew!)

"what!" Marcoh reacts.

"Well, didn't the Ishvalans organize it?" (how would I know that? It's not as if I'm in their community. It's not as if they'd be like me.) But she doesn't say that. It wouldn't help anyone's cause.

"No," she replies flatly.

"I just thought that…" one of the men says, trying not to offend but a part of her wonders if that's because they know she could kill them. "There have been a lot of Ishvalans in Central lately, and people have been saying there are terrorists among them…" (people who are Amestrian, you mean?) (I know how rumors are.)

"They have been in Central lately. But they're important allies, not terrorists," she doesn't reveal much but she knows it may as well be too much, she doesn't know what else has been said.

_Xx_

There are very few people in the slums of Kanama once she arrives, and she knows it's for a good reason when she sees the smoke and feels it drape itself over her as the old too-close-for-comfort acquaintance it is , even before she sees the rounded mountain- well, it can't be a mountain, mountains don't look like they were just recently put together, so evenly constructed- she knows what these people will and can do. She can taste the smoke in the back of her throat, but she just decides to close her mouth. She isn't going to speak, anyway.

Out of the corner of her eye she watches Jerso and Zampano meet up with the other two chimeras; she watches them argue about some misconceptions and shared histories. But not only does she have no reason to listen. She almost exhales in aggravation (I know what to expect from you, do you know anything about me? No. I understand) as she heard Edwina's voice not calling her, but speaking of her. "Hey, Doctor!" Edwina greets Marcoh. "And…her…" she turns her eyes to acknowledge her but can only guess what Edwina sees in them, or more likely, what she doesn't see. It isn't that she's concerned with what Edwina thinks of her- she just wonders if she could ever find out what all those judgments are, too see if they're true. They've got to be.

She follows Edwina along, anyway, there's nowhere she needs to be. Besides, she doesn't want to deal with any underlying suspicions she knows that most people around have about her.

She hears a dull tapping noise, sounding from the mountain that isn't, and a low, stifled sound that she knows is speaking. Nobody talks about it, let alone to her, even though she knows they're trying to listen. And she _is_, even though she doesn't know why.

She already can't go back.

_Xx_

According to Edwina, but she doesn't see Edwina as an invalid source, just one that she doesn't know if she can always be able to count on for reasons she'd decline to speak of- Alice is in the mountain with Pride the homunculus, trapped inside the strange mass of earth with no way out (_but couldn't she use her metal to break her way out? No- Pride would kill her...) _ (if Gluttony wanted to eat her and Lust wanted to tear into her and Envy wanted to destroy everything, would Pride want anything to do with her?) Unless this Father needs him to. She's gotten in their way by now, and if Father remembers her- no, he must. There isn't a question about it, but she still needs answers. She always does somehow. "There are, trapped inside of him, all of the souls of Xerxes," Hohenheim, the Elric sisters' father says. (his name, she notices, is so strange and old fashioned- she's never heard anything like it, not even an Amestrian name. But then again, she's not one to talk, not even having a name.) She can almost feel the Stone inside her head, screaming for her help and her death, and her love and her recognition and thousands over thousands of voices that will never be saved. Hohenheim, she figures, if he's as worldly as he seems then should know that a lost cause is a lost cause- but she's not sure if she thinks Father will be one. (but she's seen the world, she's seen hell, she knows she can't quite trust him right now, he looks just like that Father-)

"How can we get to him, though? Didn't you say he's underground?" Zampano asks.

"I know of an entrance," she hesitates before saying it, reconsidering even entering this group- this Hohenheim is even more rooted in the country than his children (she notices that Edwina and Hohenheim don't seem to be like a regular father and daughter, but then again, Edwina isn't regular- country girls don't go around plotting to save and destroy their homeland. For a moment she remembers her own father. But she doesn't think of him for long. She can't have that life. Maybe it's because she isn't usual either that she understands why Edwina and her father are the way they are, but she knows if she was anything like Edwina Elric, she wouldn't have even known about the roads that led her here.)

She almost steps back, thinking of (_my left arm creates and my right arm destroys_ wondering what Father would do with that knowledge what this Hohenheim if that's even his name could do) (she doesn't dislike him, but she can't trust anyone, even someone who doesn't address her for what she is- they all do, but he didn't.) He seems detached, but observant- she knows how she must seem, as if her mind isn't even in this world. After a while of being looked at you learn to look in. If only they knew. She knows what there is to think of when it would be best not to, when it would be best to act. (if passivity can't save your soul, it can't save your life) "There's a tunnel that I used to get to Father with May Chang. There are chimeras guarding it. But we've got to be able to get through." She doesn't know who- what- Father is and she knows the last time she saw him she barely escaped.

She doesn't need to escape.

(this can't be regrettable this won't be) It all ends up that way, she knew all along she'd never end the path _you should have known it could just get worse from there_ but she doesn't even know what she's going to walk to now. It's too late. It's always been. No matter how she rebuilds, she'll always be destroyed- she is ruin. No matter who she avenges she'll never be able to erase being to weak to fight herself, let alone anyone else.

But none of them see that, none should- she watches Edwina walk up to the mountain, wondering if she could hear Alice if she were to speak.

And for a moment she's grateful she's never needed to hope.

She must find Father, but she acts as no Mother, and she does not think she will ever be a Sister.


	29. IX of Clubs

_Desire to attain the regions of the psychic, going beyond the bounds of physical safety._

"There are guards at the entrance," Edwina says, but it doesn't matter. There have been guards specifically for her before, and there have been guards who she's pushed her way past. Bullets aren't always as quick as she is. It's not the weapon, it's the way you wield it.

In the wooded area near the entrance to the building, she hides behind a tree, watching the guards talk among themselves. For now, they have a job that doesn't need to be done. Just disposable soldiers (in the end, she supposes, they all are that to Bradley- even some of the higher ups, possibly, she wouldn't know, but she doesn't always need proof)

"I can use my title," Edwina smirks, "this won't be so hard, Scar," (she wonders how far it goes stacked up against a non-alchemist's title, or the title of a more typical soldier) climbing over the fence and running towards the soldiers. "Help!" she calls, louder then she is convincing in tone, but loud enough to make it seem like she's momentarily incapable of using her knowledge to overpower. (if we were alone you probably wouldn't need help to fight me, and you sure wouldn't want it) (she wonders if she called for help, would it seem like she needed it?) "Scar is chasing me because I'm a State Alchemist, Edwina Elric! She's right here!"

"Hey!" one of the guards points his gun to her as soon as he sees her. "Freeze!" he commands, but hell already has and covered her with it, so as Edwina uses her metal fist to render the guards unconscious, she just stares at their _frozen_ bodies, hands stiffened and outstretched with their guns still lying on the ground pointed her way, and then makes her way as fast as she can walk so fast she can feel the shortness in her breath and the burning in her legs, and she follows closely Edwina and her self-assurance.

"Here!" Edwina pushes open black, grand doors with a seal over it carved into a demon's head. "Should we go into groups?" she asks.

"I can go that way," Hohenheim decides serenely (as if he's done this hundreds of times) "and Edwina can go with Scar."

"What the hell? Why should I go with that- with her?" Edwina glares at her, but she just looks back as unemotionally and coldly as she can, (whatever you think I am, just because you could be right, doesn't mean this is the time to be arguing about it) . She doesn't really want to go with Edwina either, especially if Edwina would pick fights with her, even if that probably won't happen- but especially since she has no idea where she's headed. (I'm not asking you to understand me, it's a frivolous wish that I don't have, I don't expect that of you, I don't expect it from any of you- I expect your hate. But get used to Scar. I had to.)

"Well…when Father blocked your alchemy, hers worked," Hohenheim says. Well, it's true but it's not as if she knows how to explain that. She may have power, but she doesn't need to know much about Edwina to know that Edwina knows its intricate ways.

Father. She barely knows what to expect, but she's seen him. They're not supposed to guess, she thinks, they just have to wait for him to destroy them or go down fighting him.

She still doesn't hesitate as she walks forward through the underground tunnels- she can see Edwina staring at her out of the corner of her eye, but she supposes it's understandable with someone who looks like her.(she doesn't look at herself much, but if those wanted posters are correct, then she looks like an omen) maybe it's who she is- by now, Edwina would have run out of new reasons to find her revolting. But she doesn't say a single word, none of her thoughts, not caring to start a conversation with her at this time. She supposes she's already said all that's needed.

As they come to another large doorway, everyone else stops. She looks around- the doors are ornate with ancient writing and symbols she doesn't quite understand (the sun's blinding power, the moon's cold watchfulness and silence); silence moans behind the doors (on the ground, she sees a corpse and pieces of dust-covered armor). The door seems like it's never been opened, the secrets compressed inside aren't even secrets if nobody knows they're there, longing to be known by those desperate to hide them- (she's been staring at it so much she barely notices Edwina struggling to open at the center of the doors.) "Come on…" she says to herself. Determined.

The two doors slide away from each other, and she starts to walk closer to everyone else so she can see better, but an emaciated arm, _white_ not just pale but white as a bone in the desert, reaches out and another and countless one-eyed screaming moon-sallow creatures with mouths opening wider than their heads biting and breathing and groaning- she doesn't know- she does one of the only things that's never failed her even when it's condemned her, gets ready to destroy, she clenches her fist and can feel her tense arm shake into thin flesh.

Dolls. Living dolls. And she knows the world is all too full of doll makers.

_Xx_

Kimblee distantly wonders what Pride would say to her if he saw how she had rushed here, driving dangerously fast to the mountain as soon as she heard the order and made sure she could still bring the Stone out and covered the marks on her face with cosmetics and told herself she didn't have to prove _her_ right.

She sees Heinkel looking towards the mountain- he's caught on, she supposes, he's always been a bit too clever- serves him right, she thinks noticing his injuries, just like her- (I'm not _weak_) "Alice, can you hear me? You have to stop him! He's sending out a message in Morse code!" Heinkel reveals (at least it wasn't my plan, but they wouldn't use mine anyway). She forces her lips upwards, runs her tongue along her grinding teeth as she lowers herself to the earth, leveling her hands to the deserving ground, and the manufactured mountain blows apart.

She can taste dirt and what must be Heinkel's blood (he isn't her problem right now) "Hello," rings_ that_ voice, its clear, sweet menace giving her to helplessness- (they've already sold her to the lowest bidder) she's had her time, but none of this will ever be about her, none of this can ever help her. She knew. "Thank you for your kindness in picking me up from here."

He's staring at her. Not just those eyes glance at her, watch her so intently and hungrily that they know her, and the ones on his face too- and the_ mouths_, one opens just enough so it shows her the red-stained teeth gnash mockingly and the vast wasteland glinting behind it. Whatever he's looking at-she knows. She hates that it's there. (_I know it's out job to be placed like this but do you think I like being seen like this? _She _knows _she has circles under her eyes so gray they look like thick makeup, thick makeup on her forehead covering an x shaped cut she can't explain only barely and obviously concealing it, she knows her expression is doing the worst job of covering the truth she never thought she'd have to use- but no. She's here for work. She knows work _not this work stop pretending STOP PRETENDING _but she can't she can't afford to see herself anymore)

It's time to _do what she's told _(didn't you like this?) and take its benefits (they're not here anymore) until they fall to her feet like old enemies she never had to remember. "I've got places to be," she slides a strand of bloodstained hair out of her face not even bothering to make herself look presentable (_a lady never leaves the house without her self respect _they stopped believing she was one long ago). (she can hear his reaction almost _here, you mean?_)

He laughs.

(she thinks of blood caked under her fingernails, she thinks of Ishval and the rest of the military and the flask of unconsciousness hidden in her car and _her _) (she thinks of how easily the laughter could stop if the places didn't exist) "you'll forgive me, won't you?" Pride asks innocently (no) "I won't let my guard down again."

(Like I couldn't) She hates him. She's in too deep, always has been- and he knows it.

_Xx_

May screams as she runs down the hall, chased by these Amestrian monsters, grasping both Xiaomei and Envy's jar. Her small feet punctuate the dirt as she sprints and hears the pipes break off the walls. "Envy! You tricked me!" she thinks for a moment, maybe she should have never come back- but no, she tells herself, she was meant to come here.

"I didn't!" Envy cries, "immortality is just a bit further..." but she doesn't care. Not about the winding, downwards path to immortality she got off already. She might be running for her life, she might need safety- but she can handle this, she's handled worse. She's made her own path now and no past hopes can stop her, no battle can change her mind, not if she has to fight every creature in this hall. For her people, for her country- she's protecting them, fighting for them. Fighting for herself.


	30. The Knave of Clubs

_Man faced by difficulty becoming aware of his forces and who can prevail or stagnate according to his abilities...hard work with chances of success...yielding in the face of effort._

"Are you alone?" I heard Gluttony was with you," Kimblee asks Pride. She's heard a lot, but she supposes being told the truth is too much to ask. "Where is he?" if he's not in the mountain- Pride is walking out and dragging Alice's helmet behind him (I'll have your head)

"I ate him," Pride says, a strange mix of nonchalance and bragging, as if he's daring her to react. (you ate him? I ate a red and white witch alive and she clawed her way half out of me) she's eaten thousands of souls of humans in one Stone but she isn't sure what it would be like to- to do what Pride does. Consuming. But from what she knows of Gluttony, he's no person- neither is Pride. She remembers those eyes leering and surrounding her, she has no doubt he would.

"But he's your ally," she's not really surprised at what he's done, but she can't quite comprehend why he'd do it- he doesn't seem so spontaneous. "You…ate him?" (and I thought I was cruel.)

"He's no ally," Pride explains in a bored tone as if he's wasting his time speaking so unnecessarily, (or maybe, she figures, he's wasting his time just explaining to her. Wasting his time with her-) "we're the same. And we went back to being the same." For a moment, a moment she hopes Pride doesn't spend analyzing her silence, she casts her eyes towards Alice and _forces _herself to think of _here_.

"Is that so?" she intones, attempting to sound casual, but mostly sounding distracted as she follows Alice with coveting eyes.

"Mr. Heinkel!" Alice calls, her soft all-too-kind and concerned voice reverberating in the air, slicing almost harsh and shrill into Kimblee's head. She doesn't understand why Alice should care- Alice is so close and yet she wastes her energy and attention caring for this half-dead man who can't help her more than loving her sister can. If she were in Alice's place-

"Still alive." Heinkel doesn't seem to be paying attention to her from his immobile position. She's not sure why- this is her doing, sort of. But she sees Pride shadows trailing the earth, making their way to wrap around Alice's legs (she can see the shadows have _hands_-the corner of her mouth turns down as she can almost feel the small fingers scraping up her, can feel the hands on her mouth)

An explosion sounds as Alice unexpectedly claps her hands together, sending dirt and dust and hell knows what else at this point in all directions. Pride scowls but Kimblee doesn't notice as she blocks the currents from her eyes, covering her face in her hands. Through her fingers and half-closed eyes that she tries to protect but can't quite turn away, she can see Pride's shadows still thrusting through Alice's false body, dragging it- her- closer.

But the legs aren't attached to anything. Alice has gone free. But not for long, Kimblee knows, that sort of victory can't last. At least, it never has.

_Xx_

"There's no end to them!" Edwina yells, almost getting caught between two of the living dolls, the paler-than-death creatures.

One of them reaches its hand out to her, fingers unnaturally outstretched widely, its palm flying towards her- she slams her hand around its forehead, shaking it backwards as its neck erodes and its spine twists inwards, and its tongue half-melts out of its gaping mouth, but its eye swivels, staring at her as it reconstructs its head- so she takes its neck and snaps its whole head off the best she can (if you cannot completely eradicate you destroy)

They surround her, some closer than others, staring into her vacantly, but barely even seeming to notice each other let alone her- (they fall away into each other, leaning into each other, using each other's bodies as if they are just many parts of one instrument- it comes to her that this might be their purpose.) "Why aren't they dying?" Zampano elbows one out of his way.

"They put humans' souls on these things!" Edwina shouts, teeth clenched, fists reeling into blank faces. (they? She wants to chase Edwina's thoughts, who are they?) These homunculi everyone talks about? She sidesteps one doll with its mouth open, only to brush against another, its skin hard-as-ice and just as cold but dry as a bone in a desert that isn't hers, all on her face- her eyes widen and she forgets to breathe as she feels it permeate her flesh, as she uses her arm to tear its head to shredded ruins- doll parts, usable, breakable. She knows how it goes.

She notices out of the corner of her eye, an open doorway, just enough so that if they saw it they could find their way out to the city and she doesn't want to know what would happen afterwards- before she can point it out, a few of them stagger closer, closer, too close, she sees Edwina clasp her hands together and transmute a wall of rock over the opening as if there never was one. "There's nowhere they can run now!" she yells over the shrieking dolls. "I had to block their way," she tells the group, as if by custom- she doesn't know Edwina as the apologetic type (you aren't sorry for making the move that's one step to the side of the enemy). But are these even enemies, sister? Are they of each other? She sees no evidence of thoughts or mental awareness (even if she tried she couldn't fight like that.)

"No, it's fine," Darius says, "someone had to."

"We can't risk them getting outside," she adds, wondering if it's possible that they could break through the walls. She doesn't even bother making eye contact with Edwina- the dolls' movements seem to speak to her, don't look away from us, not this time, not here, almost as if to tell her if she looks away she won't be able to comprehend the destruction that would follow. It couldn't have been her to help, she knows- but she can fend for herself, barely, and she can tell she'll need that if she can't keep up. She may not be carrying her own weight in the group, but she carries more than she lets them know, if anyone resents her, it isn't for that- she can reduce these dolls to less than the sum of their parts, anyway, just as fate did to her.

"For some reason I just hate when she agrees with us…" Edwina says (I can't say I wonder why.) she doesn't care, she's more than used to people being angry with her- it's how it's supposed to be, now and for a long time before.

So she doesn't say a word back. "How could they make such things?" Edwina stares at the screaming, anguished creatures, their ribs nearly tearing through their skin. (they? She doesn't ask, not quite convinced that she can tell for certain if or how Edwina would know.) "We've got to get past them in order to get to Father and it sure won't be easy…" Edwina begins, positioning her arms back, (well no, not if we can't completely kill them- she grinds her teeth, trying to figure out the quickest way, a hidden path, if she's done it before she can do it again- no. Destruction is her way, the earth's way-)

She can hear the walls crumbling as she tears an arm or a leg- after a while it _all feels the same_, don't you know that if you have to get used to it sometimes you almost can, there is no blood to remind her, she barely breathes, does not have to exert herself as she tears another doll apart- whatever they are, she thinks, she doesn't think it would be any less difficult fighting their creator. Or whatever made them. Some of these beings, to her, they don't seem like they could be a he or a she, they don't seem to be defined that way-

The ceiling almost falls- she stiffens suddenly, in anticipation of whichever Father everyone is so preoccupied with and talking about coming through, passing her by, or erasing her along with this entire area, her unmoving face hiding her head's twisting nerves, her eyes widen- but she knows who this is.

Trails of black and gray smoke, like from a disaster, line the room as light flashes in through the other side. The air, thick and overheated, almost chokes her for a minute but she holds her mouth closed.

A woman walks in followed by a man holding a gun. But she knows this time she does not need to defend herself against Rochelle Mustang (they've both been on fire, haven't you?) or Rizen Hawkeye (bullets haven't always failed you, clean and quick, that destruction leaves a mark). Both of them, she knows, have much more to be thinking about than her- not that she knows who told them what was going on or why they came- (she doesn't think they'd be even somewhat responsible for this.) "Fullmetal!" says the Flame Alchemist (she isn't sure what to call her), "you look like you could use some help." (she wonders who the Lieutenant's pointing his gun at.)

"Damn it, Colonel, you couldn't have come any later," Edwina says in awe. (were you expecting her?)

"This place…takes me back, Lieutenant," Mustang half smiles, half heartedly. "I remember that battle with Lust."

"As do I," Hawkeye deadpans, reaching over his back for a rifle.

Whatever they're talking about, though, she doesn't really have an idea and she has no business in, but if they're going to continue she thinks that there's going to be time for that later- the second she hears the State Alchemist call her- "Scar? Is that you?" she doesn't give a real answer, she knows they all know what she is, she shakes her head in disbelief as she cracks a doll's head in half as effectively as she can in this rush, whipping her head back and hoping her message will get across more than her face.

"Later, we can do this, we have to fight!" she says as clearly as she can, staring full-on, not even looking for attackers she can fend off.

"Don't order me around," she replies, but still adjusts the gloves on her hands (they look too clean for what they're used for.)

"Understood," however, Rizen Hawkeye automatically responds, (last time I say you, you shot me in the leg…you seem cut out for business) "We'll definitely do what needs to be done in order to kill these…things." He rolls his sleeves up his trim arms, firing enough bullets to kill multiple people, but she already knew it wouldn't do any harm.

"That won't work!" calls Edwina, "it takes a lot more than…guns…to get rid of these things," she watches Darius wrestle one away.

"Not again!" he replies, resorting to shooting their legs (if you can't destroy, do the next best thing…)

"What the hell are you doing, Mustang?" Edwina's reprimanding cuts off any train of thought that may be set to crash (well, that's most likely for the better.) But there is no reply other than a cold look (she only can wonder what thoughts lie underneath, but she's sure she's known the same ones in her own head before whether she likes it or not.) before a wave of fire incinerates the room.

She sees the dolls collapsing to their knees, or flat on their faces, heads lunging back as the flames char them; for a moment she pictures them not as those white dolls but as the burning dead of Ishval, as her own body wasting away before she rises back up, years ago- she closes her eyes and when she opens them, it's still this day, she drags her fingers through her wet hair. There is too much to do, but she's specialized in overworking herself. She's her own doll.


End file.
